UC-NRLF 


NEW  SPIRIT 

of  tHe 

NEWARMT 

JOSEPH  H.  ODELL 


GIFT   OF 

School  of 

,lC 


The  New  Spirit 

of 
The  New  Army 


The  New  Spirit 

of 

The  New  Army 


A  MESSAGE   TO    THE 
"SERVICE  FLAG  "  HOMES 


By 
JOSEPH   H.   ODELL 


With  an  Introduction  by 
NEWTON  D.  BAKER 

Secretary  of  War 


NEW  YORK        CHICAGO        TORONTO 
Fleming   H.  Revell  Company 

LONDON  AND  EDINBURGH 


Copyright,  1918,  by 
FLEMING  H.  REVELL  COMPANY 


New  York:  158  Fifth  Avenue 
Chicago:  17  North  Wabash  Ave. 
Toronto:  25  Richmond  Street,  W. 
London:  21  Paternoster  Square 
Edinburgh:  100  Princes  Street. 


To  the  memory 

of 
Lieutenant  W.  W.  Odell,  M.  C, 

$th  Sherwood  Foresters,  B.  E.  F. 

who  fell  in 
Flanders,  October  Fourth,  1917 

while  gallantly 

leading  his    men    in  an  attack 
upon  the  German  trenches 


THE  WHITE  HOUSE,  WASHINGTON 
To  the  Soldiers  of  the  National  Army  : 

"  You  are  undertaking  a  great  duty.  The  heart 
of  the  whole  country  is  with  you.  Everything 
that  you  do  will  be  watched  with  the  deepest  in- 
terest and  with  the  deepest  solicitude  not  only  by 
those  who  are  near  and  dear  to  you,  but  by  the 
whole  nation  besides.  For  this  great  war  draws 
us  all  together,  makes  us  all  comrades  and 
brothers,  as  all  true  Americans  felt  themselves  to 
be  when  we  first  made  good  our  national  inde- 
pendence. The  eyes  of  all  the  world  will  be  upon 
you,  because  you  are  in  some  special  sense  the  sol- 
diers of  freedom. 

"Let  it  be  your  pride,  therefore,  to  show  all 
men  everywhere  not  only  what  good  soldiers  you 
are,  but  also  what  good  men  you  are,  keeping  your- 
selves fit  and  straight  in  everything  and  pure  and 
clean  through  and  through.  Let  us  set  for  our- 
selves a  standard  so  high  that  it  will  be  a  glory 
to  live  up  to  it  and  then  let  us  live  up  to  it  and 
add  a  new  laurel  to  the  crown  of  America. 

"  My  affectionate  confidence  goes  with  you  in 
every  battle  and  every  test.  God  keep  and  guide 
you!  " 

WOODBOW  WILSON. 


Introduction 

WHEN  this  war  is  over  and  the  men 
and  women  of  America  have  had 
an  opportunity  to  obtain  a  per- 
spective on  its  conduct  and  results,  there  will 
be  an  adequate  appreciation  of  Dr.  Odell's 
statement  about  Camp  Hancock  :  "  I  would 
rather  intrust  the  moral  character  of  my  boy 
to  that  camp  than  to  any  college  or  uni- 
versity I  know.  This  does  not  cast  any  un- 
usually dark  shadow  upon  the  educational 
institutions  of  the  country,  but  they  have 
never  possessed  the  absolute  power  that  is 
now  held  by  the  War  Department.'* 

Camp  Hancock  is  by  no  means  unique  in 
the  quality  that  inspired  this  expression  of 
praise.  The  training  camps  that  are  fitting 
our  men,  both  of  the  army  and  navy,  to  fight 
for  the  cause  of  democracy  are  builders  of 
moral  as  well  as  physical  stamina. 

These  chapters  interested  me  greatly  when 
in  part  they  first  appeared  in  The  Outlook, 
for  I  found  in  them  a  complete  understand- 
ing of  the  work  of  the  War  Department 
Commission  on  Training  Camp  Activities. 
7 


8  IFTEODUCTION 

The  scope  of  the  Commission's  activities  is 
even  wider  than  is  indicated  here,  and  its 
work  is  growing  rapidly.  Special  library 
buildings  have  been  built  at  the  camps,  and 
the  American  Library  Association  has  un- 
dertaken the  work  of  conducting  them. 
Camp  theatres  seating  audiences  of  three 
thousand  have  been  erected,  and  the  men 
are  enjoying  the  best  theatrical  performances 
at  prices  of  from  ten  to  twenty-five  cents. 
Eminent  actors  and  managers  are  coopera- 
ting with  us  in  this  field. 

Cooperation,  indeed,  has  marked  the  work 
of  the  Commission  at  every  turn.  Ameri- 
cans acknowledge  their  debt  to  the  soldier ; 
they  believe  in  him,  and  in  return  the  soldier 
believes  in  his  mission.  For  a  succinct 
statement  of  the  value  of  this  work,  I  cannot 
improve  on  what  Dr.  Odell  says  : 

"  If  Germany  should  crumble  before  these 
men  should  get  into  action,  if  we  have  lav- 
ished billions  of  dollars  to  train  men  for  bat- 
tles they  will  never  fight,  yet  the  money  has 
been  well  spent,  and  I  consider  it  the  best 
investment  in  citizenship  the  country  could 
have  made." 

NEWTON  D.  BAKER, 

Secretary  of  War. 
Washing  ton  >  January  14.,  1918. 


Foreword 

AMERICA  is  on  trial  in  the  court  of 
the  nations.  Democracy  has  set 
forth  to  prove  its  fitness  to  determine 
world  affairs.  For  many  years  Europe  has 
taken  us  at  our  own  valuation  and  has  con- 
ceded our  efficiency,  resourcefulness  and  de- 
cisiveness. To  a  very  large  degree — perhaps 
to  the  point  of  peril — we  have  accepted  our- 
selves at  our  own  valuation,  and  we  have 
been  more  than  content  with  the  audit.  This 
war  has  been  merciless  toward  illusions. 
One  question  is  now  paramount  in  every 
mind  :  Will  America  stand  the  test  ?  Our 
allies  look  to  us  for  the  final  contribution 
toward  winning  the  war.  There  is  nothing 
fictitious  in  this  attitude,  nothing  of  mere 
courtesy  or  flattery  ;  the  responsible  states- 
men of  Great  Britain,  France  and  Italy, 
frankly  acknowledge  their  dependence  upon 
the  United  States.  We  have  responded 
with  a  solemn  pledge  to  use  our  utmost  re- 
sources to  meet  the  demand.  Three  years 
and  a  half  of  heroic  and  ghastly  struggle  and 
9 


10  FOREWORD 

the  outpouring  of  millions  of  lives  will  have 
been  in  vain  unless  we  can  mobilize  our 
moral  and  material  forces  and  rush  them 
rapidly  to  the  support  of  our  gallant  allies. 
Liberty  and  justice  cannot  be  preserved  to 
mankind  by  phraseology.  America  must  be 
the  victor  or  the  victim  in  this  death-grapple 
with  autocracy. 

Our  first  and  greatest  asset  is  the  quality 
of  our  manhood.  Russia  has  failed,  not  for 
lack  of  quantity  in  man-power,  but  because  of 
a  flaw  in  its  quality.  We  are  perfectly  right 
in  the  confidence  that  the  traditions  and  cus- 
toms and  habits  of  a  normal  state  of  society 
entitle  us  to  expect  victory.  But  with  hun- 
dreds of  thousands  of  men  torn  from  the 
normal  state  of  society  new  perils  arise. 
Military  establishments  have  always  been 
the  easy  prey  of  moral  vampires.  Our  prob- 
lem is  :  How  to  keep  our  splendid  one-hun- 
dred per  cent,  manhood  at  the  one-hundred 
per  cent,  level  of  efficiency  ?  No  other  nation 
has  yet  succeeded  in  doing  that.  I  think  we 
shall  succeed,  and  mainly  because  of  the  re- 
markable work  of  the  Commission  on  Train- 
ing Camp  Activities. 

During  my  tour  of  the  training  camps  and 
cantonments  I  gave  my  attention  to  the 
morals  and  the  morale  of  our  army,  leaving 


FOREWORD  11 

the  material  equipment  and  accoutrement  for 
another  occasion  or  for  a  different  investi- 
gator. I  asked  no  questions  about  blankets, 
clothing,  small  arms  or  artillery.  The  fol- 
lowing chapters  are  the  record  of  a  first  hand 
investigation,  made  without  prejudice  or  pre- 
dilection, for  the  purpose  of  telling  the  millions 
of  relatives  and  friends  of  the  soldiers  what 
camp  life  and  the  military  regime  are  doing 
for  the  young  manhood  of  the  nation.  The 
editors  of  The  Outlook  asked  me  to  write  im- 
partially and  frankly,  condemning  things  bad 
as  freely  as  praising  things  good.  I  am 
happy  to  say  that  I  found  very  little  deserv- 
ing of  condemnation.  The  marvellous  co- 
operation of  the  military  authorities  and  the 
various  voluntary  agencies  has  produced  a 
moral  and  social  environment  for  our  troops 
in  training  which  is  unparallelled  in  history. 

From  the  time  the  articles  began  to  appear 
in  The  Outlook  I  have  had  numerous  letters 
confirming  my  general  conclusions.  Parents, 
brothers,  sisters,  wives  and  sweethearts  may 
rest  assured  that  every  possible  safeguard  is 
being  placed  around  the  character  of  their 
dear  ones.  Indeed,  more  than  this,  every 
conceivable  incentive  is  being  summoned  or 
created  to  stimulate  a  healthy  moral  life  in 
our  citizen-soldiers.  Of  course,  there  are 


12  FOBEWOED 

isolated  details  or  detachments  of  men  for 
whom  little  can  be  done  in  an  organized 
way,  but  in  the  great  camps  and  canton- 
ments it  is  difficult  to  conceive  how  anything 
more  could  be  done.  Whatever  may  be  said 
of  our  material  preparedness,  it  is  certain 
that  the  moral  resources  of  the  nation  have 
become  swiftly  and  effectively  available  in 
this  period  of  crisis. 

JOSEPH  H.  ODELL. 

Troy,  N.  Y. 


Contents 

I.  THE  SOUL  OF  THE  SOLDIER        .        .      15 

II.  THE  MIRACLE  OF  DEMOCRACY    .        .       35 

III.  DEMOCRATIZING  THE  ARMY  TO  SAVE 

DEMOCRACY         ....      59 

IV.  THE  MEN  BEHIND  THE  MEN  WHO 

FIGHT  THE  HUNS         ...      75 

V.  MAKING  DEMOCRACY  SAFE  FOR  THE 

SOLDIER      .        ;        .        .        .      95 

VI.  WILL  AMERICA  FAIL?  1 1 1 


I 

The  Soul  of  the  Soldier 


I 

THE  SOUL  OF  THE  SOLDIER 

OF  our  present  army  on  foreign  serv- 
ice, or  in  training  at  home,  more 
than  one  million  enlisted  ;  the  bal- 
ance were  drafted.  In  the  National  Army 
cantonments  there  is  a  spirit  of  contentment 
and  cooperation  just  as  hearty  as  that  which 
is  evident  in  the  National  Guard  and  Regular 
Army  camps.  If  we  could  get  a  composite 
picture  of  the  motives  which  led  to  the  mil- 
lion or  more  voluntary  enlistments  we  might 
have  a  glimpse  of  the  seed  which  is  growing 
into  the  soul  of  the  American  soldier.  But 
the  men  will  not  answer  a  questionaire  with 
simplicity  and  frankness  ;  perhaps,  not  being 
trained  psychologists,  they  cannot.  Their 
answers  are  humorous,  or  evasive,  or  repre- 
sent the  mood  of  the  passing  moment,  or 
their  powers  of  composition  fail  them  in  try- 
ing to  describe  a  set  of  mixed  or  complex 
motives.  I  have  questioned  them  directly 
and  indirectly,  and  the  answers  seemed  to 
simmer  down  to  this  :  they  were  caught  in  a 
17 


18         THE  SOUL  OF  THE  SOLDIER 

movement  which  they  did  not  try  to  resist. 
"  Everybody  was  doing  it ;  "  "I  didn't  want 
to  be  left  out  of  the  show  ; "  "  Seemed  to  be 
the  only  thing  to  do  ;  "  "  Every  decent  chap 
ought  to  fight  when  his  country  is  at  war  ; " 
"  Thought  it  would  be  a  fine  experience." 
Among  the  enlisted  men  I  have  not  found 
one  who  flamed  out  with  righteous  indigna- 
tion, or  who  proclaimed  himself  ready  to  die 
for  civilization,  or  who  professed  a  passion 
for  making  the  world  safe  for  democracy,  or 
who  posed  as  a  St.  George  to  save  Belgium 
or  France  from  the  Hohenzollern  dragon. 
Yet  all  of  this  proves  nothing  except  that  the 
seed  of  the  soldier  soul,  like  all  other  seed, 
prefers  to  germinate  out  of  sight. 

Whenever  I  have  talked  at  any  length 
with  individuals  or  groups  of  men  they  have 
showed  an  eagerness  to  know  about  German 
atrocities.  Was  it  true  that  children's  hands 
had  been  hacked  off,  that  nuns  had  been 
violated,  that  Canadian  soldiers  had  been 
crucified,  that  the  girls  and  women  of  the 
Somme  district  had  been  carried  away  by 
the  Huns  for  unspeakable  purposes,  that  the 
wounded  in  the  hospitals  had  been  deliber- 
ately shelled  ?  They  wanted  details  of  these 
things,  I  found,  to  confirm  their  convictions 
of  horror  created  by  the  better  known  out- 


THE  SOUL  OF  THE  SOLDIER         19 

rages,  such  as  the  sinking  of  the  Lusitania, 
the  bombing  of  London  and  the  firing  upon 
the  life-boats  of  torpedoed  ships.  Then,  al- 
most invariably,  they  expressed  a  lurid  desire 
to  be  introduced  to  the  Kaiser  or  the  chinless 
Crown  Prince.  So  I  have  been  forced  to  the 
conclusion  that  the  motive  which  they  did 
not  or  could  not  express  was  an  instinctive 
revolt  against  the  brutality  of  misdirected 
force.  They  were  dimly  conscious  that  some 
horrible  evil  was  moving  out  against  every- 
thing decent  and  honorable  in  the  world 
and  because  the  European  nations  could  not 
defeat  the  thing  alone  America  must  help. 
It  was  a  hard  and  dirty  piece  of  work,  but  it 
had  to  be  done,  and  they  were  willing  to  lend 
a  hand.  But  I  found  very  little  exaltation  of 
spirit  and  practically  no  spread-eagle  pa- 
triotism ;  they  were  calmly  bent  upon  busi- 
ness. 

Of  course  this  does  not  mean  that  they 
never  feel  the  thrill  of  a  spiritual  purpose. 
It  simply  means  that  passionate  and  con- 
suming motives  were  not  the  original  in- 
centive to  their  enlistment.  In  the  camps 
and  cantonments  there  is  a  well  denned  plan 
for  lifting  the  thoughts  of  the  men  to  a  high 
level.  Speakers  such  as  ex- Presidents  Roose- 
velt and  Taft,  Dr.  Henry  van  Dyke,  Henry 


20         THE  SOUL  OP  THE  SOLDIER 

Morganthau,  Newell  Dwight  Hillis  and 
Harry  Lauder  unfold  the  causes  and  mean- 
ing of  the  war  to  the  men  and  thousands  of 
them  are  caught  as  by  an  inspiration,  lifted 
completely  out  of  the  routine  drudgery  of 
their  training  and  come  from  the  meetings 
with  their  ideas  lustred  by  a  holy  purpose. 
Slowly  but  surely,  even  the  dullest  among 
them  are  realizing  the  spiritual  significance 
of  the  task  before  them.  I  saw  this  illus- 
trated during  an  evening  of  community 
singing.  Hundreds  of  men  sang  "  Tipper- 
ary  "  with  mechanical  indifference  ;  they  put 
a  little  more  verve  into  "  Over  There,"  reel- 
ing off  the  last  two  lines  of  the  chorus  with 
a  tempo  like  the  snapping  of  firecrackers; 
they  sang  "  Keep  the  Home  Fires  Burning  " 
with  the  touch  of  entreaty  which  it  requires  ; 
but  when  the  leader  gave  out  "  The  Battle 
Hymn  of  the  Republic,"  they  took  it  up  and 
carried  it  through  with  a  reverent  enthu- 
siasm. 

"  Let  us  sing  the  last  verse  again,"  said 
the  leader.  "  Listen,  boys,  while  I  read  it  to 
you  ;  it  is  wonderful : " 

"  In  the  beauty  of  the  lilies  Christ  was  born 

across  the  sea, 

With  a  glory  in   His  bosom  that  transfigures 
you  and  me : 


THE  SOUL  OP  THE  SOLDIER         21 

As  He  died  to  make  men  holy,  let  us  die  to 
make  men  free, 

While  God  is  marching  on." 

A  thrill  ran  through  the  building  as  the  men 
sang ;  they  showed  their  response  in  their 
faces  and  their  voices. 

The  note  of  vicarious  sacrifice  had  been 
struck.  After  noticing  this  among  troops 
who  had  been  less  than  two  months  in  train- 
ing camp  and  three  thousand  miles  from  the 
fighting  front,  it  is  not  difficult  to  believe  the 
British  chaplain,  Thomas  Tiplady,  when  he 
says  that  the  favorite  hymn  of  the  London 
regiments  during  the  terrific  battle  of  the 
Somme  was : 

"  When  I  survey  the  wondrous  cross 
On  which  the  Prince  of  Glory  died, 
My  richest  gain  I  count  but  loss, 
And  pour  contempt  on  all  my  pride." 

Such  experiences  do  not  negative  the  ear- 
lier statement  concerning  the  general  stolidity 
of  our  men,  but  they  point  out  that  "  the 
hard  and  dirty  piece  of  work  in  which  they 
are  to  lend  a  hand  "  may  be  lighted  up  occa- 
sionally by  a  nobler  beam. 

This  brings  us  squarely  to  the  question  of 
the  religion  of  the  camps.  Is  there  any? 
Of  course.  What  is  it  like  ?  Well,  it  is  so 


22         THE  SOUL  OF  THE  SOLDIEE 

much  like  religion  everywhere  and  yet  so  un- 
like religion  anywhere  that  it  is  peculiarly 
difficult  to  define.  The  first  thing  that 
strikes  one  is  that  the  religion  of  the  camps 
is  more  intimately  a  part  of  the  daily  life  of 
the  men  there  than  it  is  in  other  places.  A 
man  can  live  in  a  civilian  community  for 
months  and  absolutely  avoid  any  contact 
with  organized  and  articulate  religion ;  a 
soldier  cannot  live  for  a  day  in  a  camp  or 
cantonment  without  being  in  touch  with 
something  closely  identified  with  religion, 
A  man  can  work  in  a  mill  or  factory  for  a 
lifetime  and  never  see  an  authorized  repre- 
sentative of  Christianity  about  the  plant ;  in 
the  army  the  chaplain  is  one  of  his  officers. 
And  the  chaplain,  if  he  is  worthy  of  his  of- 
fice, finds  a  score  of  ways  of  coming  into  the 
lives  of  the  men.  A  real  chaplain  is  as  val- 
uable an  asset  as  the  regiment  has ;  a  lazy  or 
incompetent  chaplain  is  worse  than  an  incu- 
bus. But  at  any  rate  the  chaplain  is  as  much 
a  part  of  the  organization  as  the  adjutant  or 
the  officer  of  the  day. 

But  with  and  behind  the  chaplain  there  are 
the  Young  Men's  Christian  Association  and 
the  Knights  of  Columbus.  The  buildings  in 
which  these  institutions  do  their  work  are 
dotted  about  the  camp,  close  to  barracks  or 


THE  SOUL  OF  THE  SOLDIER         23 

tents,  and  the  soldiers  cannot  move  a  hun- 
dred yards  without  seeing  them.  They  are 
not  closed  nine-tenths  of  the  time  as  are  the 
churches  at  home.  No  one  needs  to  change 
his  clothing  to  enter  them.  Moreover,  they 
are  so  interwoven  with  the  normal  life  of  the 
soldier  that  they  seem  to  be  his  own,  as  noth- 
ing else  in  camp  is  his  own.  And  they  stand 
for  religion.  He  writes  his  letters  from  the 
same  bench  as  the  one  he  uses  in  listening  to 
a  sermon  ;  he  plays  games  under  the  same 
roof  that  shelters  him  in  receiving  the  Sacra- 
ment or  Mass ;  he  sees  a  thrilling  movie  in 
the  same  place  in  which  he  sings  the  hymns 
he  learned  in  childhood  ;  the  same  secretary 
who  referees  a  wrestling  match  or  a  boxing 
bout  talks  to  him  later  about  God.  There  is 
nothing  remote  or  separate  or  esoteric  or 
mythical  about  this  religion  ;  it  fits  into  the 
order  of  the  day  as  naturally  as  the  meals  in 
the  mess-room  ;  it  interweaves  itself  with  the 
common  occupations  of  his  leisure  hours. 
The  church  in  the  home  community  never 
did  that ;  no  man  ever  thought  of  dropping 
into  it  to  smoke  and  chat,  to  write  a  letter  to 
his  sweetheart,  to  laugh  at  Charlie  Chaplin, 
to  see  a  couple  of  local  champions  spar  for 
the  honors  of  the  ring. 

Other  distinctions  fade  also.     The  lines  be- 


24         THE  SOUL  OF  THE  SOLDIER 

tween  the  Protestant,  the  Catholic  and  the 
Hebrew  remain  but  they  are  not  emphasized 
and  they  are  never  exaggerated.  But  among 
Protestants  the  denominational  fences  are  en- 
tirely gone.  Common  sense  has  done  in  a 
month  what  committees  on  comity  could  not 
have  accomplished  in  a  millennium.  A  strict 
Baptist  mother  visited  her  son  in  one  of  the 
cantonments  on  a  recent  Sunday.  She  was 
deeply  solicitous  that  her  boy  should  receive 
proper  religious  instruction.  "  Was  there  a 
Baptist  preacher  in  camp  ? "  He  did  not 
know,  but  he  would  inquire.  Yes,  one  was 
to  hold  a  service  that  afternoon  and  give  an 
address  in  a  distant  Young  Men's  Christian 
Association  hut.  They  trudged  over  together 
and  heard  an  inspiring  address  on  how  Christ 
is  always  the  Comrade  of  every  man  who 
fights  for  truth  and  righteousness  and  how 
He  is  their  Companion  even  when  they  are 
not  conscious  of  His  presence.  "  He  walked 
with  the  two  disciples  on  the  road  to  Em- 
maus  although  they  did  not  recognize  Him ; 
He  was  with  Mary  by  the  sepulchre  early  in 
the  morning  when  she  thought  He  was  only 
the  gardener ;  He  broke  bread  with  His  dis- 
ciples before  they  knew  it  was  He."  And, 
the  speaker  continued,  "He  is  near  you 
and  with  you  even  though  you  do  not  see 


THE  SOUL  OF  THE  SOLDIER         25 

Him  ;  you  will  find  Him  on  the  ocean  as  you 
are  going  over  there ;  He  will  creep  along 
with  you  when  you  go  out  on  duty  over  '  No 
Man's  Land '  ;  He  will  spring  over  the  top 
with  you  when  you  go  into  battle  ;  He  will 
never  leave  you  nor  forsake  you."  The  dear 
old  mother  was  delighted  and  told  the 
preacher  how  happy  she  was  that  her  son 
could  hear  such  good  Baptist  doctrine. 
11  But,  Madam,"  said  the  speaker,  "  I  am  not 
a  Baptist  but  an  Episcopalian."  Later  the 
son  said,  "  Mother,  I  took  the  Sacrament 
from  that  man  this  morning."  "  Never 
mind,"  she  said,  "it  sounded  all  right  and 
my  heart  tells  me  it  must  be  right.  What  he 
said  was  too  good  not  to  be  true." 

And  the  kind  of  preaching  to  which  the 
men  respond  ?  Of  course,  it  goes  without 
saying  that  the  "  Dear  Brethren  "  sort  of  sen- 
timentalists get  scant  attention.  Men  who 
are  preparing  to  meet  the  machine  gun  spray 
and  stand  up  against  gas  and  liquid  fire  are 
not  interested  in  spiritual  cosmetics.  Curi- 
ously, also,  the  typical,  flamboyant,  "  Believe 
or  be  Damned  "  kind  of  evangelist,  with  his 
dogmatic  theology  and  his  shibboleth  tests, 
makes  little  impression.  Dr.  John  Timothy 
Stone,  who  is  doing  very  effective  work  in 
Camp  Grant  as  religious  director,  writes  to  me 


26         THE  SOUL  OF  THE  SOLDIER 

of  his  experience  to  this  effect :  "  The  soldier 
must  see  the  man  before  he  sees  the  religion 
the  man  is  trying  to  present.  He  believes 
that  a  man  should  have  breadth  of  view  as 
to  the  convictions  of  others,  but  must  sound 
no  uncertain  note  as  to  his  own  firm  belief. 
Naturalness  in  a  speaker  is  also  an  essential. 
We  find  that  a  few  earnest  words  put  in  ten 
Vr  twelve  minutes  are  of  far  more  value  than 
lengthy  expositions  or  drawn-out  addresses." 
The  hundreds  of  thousands  of  men  in  the 
training  camps  are  elemental ;  they  have 
broken  away  or  have  been  torn  away  from 
the  elaborate  artificialities  of  community  life  ; 
they  are  getting  ready  for  a  very  elemental 
thing — killing  the  other  man  or  being  killed 
by  the  other  man.  They  are  in  no  mood  for 
the  extraneous  or  the  artificial  in  religion. 
Speakers  like  Sherwood  Eddy,  Harry  E. 
Fosdick,  Grenfell,  van  Dyke,  Cadman  and 
Ralph  Connor  reach  them  instantly  because 
they  deal  with  the  imperative  things  of  the 
soul  and  they  recognize  the  kind  of  soul  with 
which  they  have  to  deal.  Words  that  are 
simple,  direct,  earnest  and  freighted  with  a 
vivid  and  vital  personal  experience  grip  the 
men  instantly.  They  are  modest  also  and 
too  busy  learning  the  elements  of  soldiering, 
trenches  and  obeying  imperative 


THE  SOUL  OF  THE  SOLDIER         27 

orders,  to  be  moved  by  mock  heroics.  They 
do  not  want  to  be  magnified  and  glorified 
into  saviors  of  humanity ;  at  least,  not  yet, 
not  till  they  have  actually  come  to  grips  with 
the  Hun. 

Possibly  the  most  obvious  feature  of  camp 
preaching  is  its  practical  application.  It  is  a 
dynamic  intended  to  produce  an  ethic.  Its 
aim  is  not  the  discussion  of  a  subject  but  the 
attaining  of  an  object.  If  an  attempt  is  made 
to  stir  the  emotions  it  is  done  that  the  emo- 
tions may  direct  the  will  and  issue  in  char- 
acter and  conduct.  Hence  one  hears  nothing 
about  predestination  but  much  about  prayer, 
little  about  doctrines  but  a  great  deal  about 
duty.  For  instance,  there  are  many  ways  of 
defending  men  from  the  evils  of  immorality. 
The  Commission  on  Training  Camp  Activities 
is  using  all  the  resources  of  the  Federal  Gov- 
ernment in  war  time  to  suppress  the  tempta- 
tions in  the  near-by  communities ;  the  Medical 
Corps  of  the  army  is  placing  literature  in  the 
hands  of  the  men  dealing  with  the  physical 
perils  of  sexual  indiscretion,  also  the  same 
Department  is  treating  the  exposed  cases  in 
such  a  manner  that  the  consequent  physical 
evils  are  prevented ;  the  Young  Men's  Chris- 
tian Association  and  the  chaplains,  while 
working  whole-heartedly  with  the  authorities 


28         THE  SOUL  OF  THE  SOLDIEB 

in  these  measures,  are  taking  the  highest 
moral  grounds  in  dealing  with  the  men.  I 
heard  the  subject  dealt  with  in  a  religious 
talk  in  one  of  the  buildings.  The  speaker 
said  :  "  Men,  the  thing  is  wrong  and  you 
know  it  is  wrong.  It  is  just  as  wrong  if  you 
don't  get  caught  as  if  you  do.  It  is  like 
stealing  or  lying  or  killing — those  things  are 
bad  whether  you  are  found  out  or  not. 
Adultery  is  a  breaking  of  God's  law  and  you 
never  break  God's  law  without  breaking 
your  own  manhood.  You  must  stand  up 
and  fight  every  evil  desire,  because  to  give 
in  is  wrong — it  is  wrong  toward  God,  toward 
the  woman — whether  she  is  a  professional  or 
not — it  is  wrong  toward  yourself,  it  is  wrong 
toward  the  army,  it  is  wrong  toward  every- 
thing decent  in  human  society."  When  we 
were  coming  out  I  heard  one  enlisted  man 
say,  "  He's  got  our  number ;  but  there  ain't 
any  use  arguing  about  that,  he's  dead  right." 
In  the  matter  of  liquor  the  men  have  realized 
that  their  enforced  abstinence  has  produced 
nothing  but  beneficial  results.  There  is  not 
much  need  to  preach  on  that  subject.  It  is 
amazing  how  the  desire  has  almost  died  out 
with  the  abolition  of  temptation.  I  sat  one 
evening  with  a  group  of  officers  and  discussed 
the  subject.  Not  one  of  them  had  been  a 


THE  SOUL  OF  THE  SOLDIER         29 

total  abstainer  until  the  Federal  Law  went 
into  effect ;  two  of  them  confessed  that  they 
had  never  missed  an  opportunity  to  drink 
within  reasonable  limits;  they  all  admitted 
that  since  they  knew  they  could  not  have  it 
they  had  practically  ceased  to  desire  it.  Of 
course,  I  do  not  mean  that  the  army  is  ab- 
solutely bone-dry,  but  the  drinking  is  reduced 
to  an  unbelievable  minimum.  What  there  is 
of  it  comes  through  the  mistaken  kindness  of 
friends.  In  the  first  period  of  the  canton- 
ments there  was  considerable  boot-legging  in 
Trenton  and  Lowell,  but  the  authorities  have 
grown  vigilant  and  the  scoundrels  timid.  No, 
it  is  friends  of  the  men  who  are  the  worst  of- 
fenders. "  Poor  devils  1 "  they  argue.  "  Can't 
get  much  fun  in  those  dreary  camps ;  let's  give 
them  a  ray  of  good  cheer."  Then  they  buy 
a  flask  and  push  it  into  the  coat  of  the  soldier. 
Now,  the  psychology  of  the  flask  is  not  prop- 
erly understood.  It  is  usually  inferior  whiskey ; 
it  contains  just  too  much  to  drink  within  a 
limited  time,  but  not  sufficient  to  share  with 
another;  there  is  likely  to  be  enough  left  in 
the  bottle,  after  the  soldier  has  had  about  as 
much  as  he  really  wants,  to  put  him  out  of 
business,  but  it  is  too  precious  to  throw  away, 
therefore  he  drinks  it ;  its  consumption  takes 
him  into  back  alleys  and  dark  places,  where 


30         THE  SOUL  OF  THE  SOLDIEE 

other  perils  lurk.  A  man  may  keep  his  man- 
hood standing  at  a  bar  and  drinking  a  glass 
of  beer,  but  the  flask  rots  out  his  self-respect 
and  honor  and  courage,  leaving  him  a  sneak 
as  well  as  an  offender  against  military  law. 
If  the  good-natured  friend  of  the  soldier  once 
comes  to  understand  what  he  is  doing,  he  will 
cut  out  this  peculiarly  vicious  form  of  treating. 
There  are  all  kinds  of  men  in  the  training 
camps  as  there  are  everywhere  else.  There 
are  men  with  the  morals  of  a  mud  turtle  and 
the  vision  of  a  bat,  but  there  are  also  multi- 
tudes who  are  spreading  the  contagion  of  a 
splendid  manhood  through  the  barracks. 
Some  will  come  back  to'civil  life  unimproved, 
but  they  are  the  ones  who  would  go  to  the 
devil  on  a  desert  island.  But  many,  many 
thousands  will  testify  in  years  to  come  that 
the  first  glimpse  they  ever  had  of  the  possible 
beauty  and  grandeur  of  life  came  from  as- 
sociation with  their  comrades  in  camp.  For 
example,  in  Camp  Devens  there  are  numbers 
of  men  who  came  from  the  textile  cities  of 
New  England,  where  socially,  economically 
and  morally  they  were  pre-damned ;  they 
have  never  had  a  chance  to  know  anything 
or  be  anything.  But  in  Camp  Devens,  not 
counting  the  commissioned  officers  or  the 
personnel  of  the  Depot  Brigade,  there  are 


THE  SOUL  OF  THE  SOLDIER         31 

six  hundred  and  ninety-five  college  men  rep- 
resenting twenty-seven  New  England  col- 
leges and  universities.  They  are  the  best  of 
our  race,  the  flowering  of  the  purest  and 
sanest  homes,  men  who  could  found  another 
New  England  as  their  forefathers  did  three 
hundred  years  ago.  They  were  drafted  into 
service  and  their  influence  upon  the  thou- 
sands of  other  men  is  already  having  a 
marked  effect. 

Few  people,  even  among  our  political  and 
moral  economists,  realize  the  ir.fluence  of  tak- 
ing a  million  and  a  half  men  out  of  our  com- 
petitive system  and  placing  them  under  the 
law  of  cooperation.  When  the  men  under- 
stand that  their  messmates  are  not  trying  to 
steal  their  jobs  or  get  their  money  they 
haven't  the  slightest  objection  to  doing  kindly 
and  generous  things  for  one  another.  The 
complexion  of  their  world  has  changed  and 
they  change  with  it.  When  they  see  that 
the  best  men  in  camp  are  not  ashamed  to  be 
decent  they  want  to  be  decent  too ;  when 
they  find  that  some  are  not  afraid  to  pray 
they  are  willing  to  pray  also.  Two  men 
went  to  the  Young  Men's  Christian  Associa- 
tion director  in  Camp  Devens  and  said  they 
were  in  the  habit  of  kneeling  down  and  say- 
ing their  prayers  every  night  at  home. 


32         THE  SOUL  OF  THE  SOLDIER 

What  ought  they  to  do  here  ?  "  Try  it  out," 
was  the  advice.  They  did  ;  the  second  night 
two  others  in  the  barracks  joined  them ;  the 
third  night  a  few  more ;  gradually  the  num- 
ber increased  until  considerably  more  than 
half  of  the  men  resumed  the  habit  of  child- 
hood and  knelt  by  their  cots  in  prayer  before 
turning  in.  A  company  captain,  in  one  of 
the  cantonments,  the  first  evening  his  men 
stood  at  attention  for  retreat,  said,  "  Men,  this 
is  a  serious  business  we  are  engaged  in  ;  it  is 
fitting  that  we  should  pray  about  it."  There 
and  then,  this  Plattsburg  Reserve  officer  made 
a  simple  and  earnest  prayer  for  the  Divine 
Blessing  upon  their  lives  and  their  work. 
The  impression  upon  the  men  was  described 
to  me  as  tremendous.  Such  incidents,  al- 
though not  common,  indicate  the  general 
spirit  of  the  new  armies ;  the  better  men  and 
the  men  of  ampler  early  opportunities  are  al- 
ready exercising  a  refining  and  an  uplifting 
influence  upon  their  less  favored  fellows. 
Old  misunderstandings  and  prejudices  are 
passing  away ;  social  distinctions  are  giving 
way  to  a  new  solidarity ;  individual  good- 
ness, repressed  for  lack  of  an  encouraging 
environment,  is  coming  frankly  to  view.  The 
effect  upon  the  favorites  of  fortune  is  no  less 
marked  than  upon  the  men  who  came  from 


THE  SOUL  OF  THE  SOLDIER         33 

mean  streets  and  stifling  tenements.  A 
young  millionaire,  whose  most  serious  busi- 
ness in  life  had  been  buying  automobiles  and 
raising  fancy  stock  on  a  country  estate,  was 
doing  manful  work  as  a  corporal  in  a  Supply 
Company.  "  This  is  the  real  thing,  after  all," 
he  said  to  me.  A  Princeton  graduate  of  '16, 
now  a  Reserve  officer,  said  that  his  company, 
in  six  weeks,  had  gathered  more  spirit  for 
team  work  than  his  college  class  had  genera- 
ted up  to  the  middle  of  the  Junior  year. 
"  How  did  they  do  it  ?  "  I  asked.  "  They  all 
started  on  the  same  level  and  aimed  for  the 
same  end.  There  has  been  nothing  to  pull 
them  apart  in  cliques,  rather  everything  binds 
them  together.  They  have  picked  up  speed 
and  snap  ;  nothing  can  stop  them  now.  And 
I  haven't  seen  any  of  the  little  meannesses  so 
common  in  a  college." 

So  there  are  a  hundred  reciprocal  influences 
playing  on  the  men  all  the  time ;  some  are 
being  remade,  others  modified ;  many  who 
had  never  known  the  impelling  force  of  a 
great  motive  or  the  alluring  spell  of  a  high 
ideal  have  found  both  in  the  purpose  and 
spirit  of  the  new  army.  When  I  began  my 
investigation  of  the  camps  my  proclaimed 
aim  was  to  discover,  not  what  kind  of  sol- 
diers Uncle  Sam  would  send  to  France,  but 


34         THE  SOUL  OF  THE  SOLDIER 

what  kind  of  men  Uncle  Sam  would  send 
back  to  their  homes  and  their  communities 
after  the  war  is  over.  I  have  discovered 
both ;  for  in  making  better  men  we  are  mak- 
ing finer  soldiers,  and  in  making  efficient 
soldiers  we  are  producing  a  higher  type  of 
men — healthier  physically,  broader  mentally 
and  nobler  spiritually.  If  Germany  should 
crumble  before  these  men  can  get  into  action, 
if  we  have  lavished  billions  of  dollars  to  train 
men  for  battles  they  will  never  fight,  yet  the 
money  has  been  well  spent  and  I  consider  it 
the  best  investment  in  citizenship  the  country 
could  have  made. 


II 

The  Miracle  of  Democracy 


II 

THE  MIRACLE  OF  DEMOCRACY 

AN  old  time  Regular  Army  officer 
stood  watching  thousands  of  drafted 
men  straggle  into  camp.  It  was 
pouring  a  cold,  unintermittent  rain  from 
leaden  skies.  The  men  were  cluttered  with 
suit  cases  and  bundles ;  they  were  drenched 
to  the  skin  and  in  a  stunned  and  surly 
mood ;  some  of  them,  from  the  industrial 
centres,  were  in  the  moral  and  physical 
reaction  of  heavy  farewell  drinking.  And 
the  cantonment  was  scarcely  half-finished ; 
the  barracks  were  bleak  and  desolate  barns  ; 
the  roads  were  ankle  deep  in  mud  ;  one  of 
the  dishevelled  batches  of  men  wandered  for 
miles  about  the  camp  before  it  could  find 
quarters  ;  most  of  the  officers  were  as  remote 
from  orientation  as  the  men.  The  Regular 
Army  man  knitted  his  brows  and  there  was 
anxiety  in  his  eyes.  "  We  shall  have  to 
build  a  barbed  wire  entanglement  twenty 
feet  high  and  ten  feet  deep  around  the  camp 
to  keep  these  men  from  deserting  in  a  body/1 
he  said. 

37 


38      THE  MIRACLE  OF  DEMOCRACY 

Undoubtedly  the  outlook  was  ominous 
enough.  Forty  thousand  men  torn  from 
their  familiar  haunts,  their  accustomed  ways, 
their  lifelong  environment,  and  pitched  to- 
gether into  a  wilderness  of  unsightly  and 
comfortless  shacks,  under  orders  which  they 
could  not  dispute  and  from  which  they  could 
not  appeal,  to  do  things  they  had  never  done 
before  and  which  they  would  never  do  of 
their  own  accord — surely  it  was  a  perilous 
venture  for  democracy.  A  callow  youth  from 
the  farm  sat  next  at  mess  to  the  habitue  of 
the  Tenderloin,  mother's  darling  from  the 
suburb  bunked  beside  the  gunman  from  the 
underworld,  the  exclusive  fraternity  man 
from  the  exclusive  college  stood  at  attention 
between  two  grimy  immigrants  who  could 
speak  no  English,  the  bootblack  and  the 
bartender  flanked  the  immaculate  banker. 
Forty  thousand  of  them  and  in  their  midst 
every  centrifugal  element  of  personality 
known  to  a  complex  and  experimental  social 
organism,  yet  with  nothing  to  keep  them 
from  flying  into  forty  thousand  separate 
human  atoms  except  an  Act  of  Congress. 

The  Regular  Army  officer  is  not  to  be 
called  a  fool  for  thinking  that  barbed  wire 
would  have  to  supplement  legislation.  He 
was  wrong,  utterly  and  emphatically  wrong, 


THE  MIRACLE  OF  DEMOCRACY      39 

and  probably  no  one  rejoices  more  than  he 
over  the  falsifying  of  his  prophecy.  That 
welter  of  dissimilar,  divergent  and  dangerous 
units  of  humanity  has  been  made  to  coalesce 
into  an  obedient  and  cheerful  army.  Within 
thirty  days  each  regiment  and  battalion  and 
company  had  an  esprit  de  corps  which  was 
obvious  even  to  the  casual  observer.  At 
Camp  Devens  three  men  from  the  Depot 
Brigade,  after  seven  weeks  of  training,  re- 
vealed their  minds  to  me  without  reserve. 

"We  are  moving  out  next  week,"  they 
said,  "  going  to  one  of  the  Southern  canton- 
ments." 

I  congratulated  them,  telling  them  of  the 
warm  climate,  the  blue  skies  and  the  beauti- 
ful scenery.  To  my  surprise  they  were  in  a 
mood  of  resentment 

"  But  we  don't  want  to  go,"  they  objected. 
"  It's  awfully  cold  here  and  no  heat  in  the 
barracks,  but  we  like  it.  We  know  our  way 
around,  we've  got  lots  of  pals  in  the  camp, 
the  Y  always  has  something  good  going  on, 
and  the  officers  are  white.  Why  can't  they 
let  us  stay  ?  " 

One  of  them  had  been  a  shipping  clerk  in 
a  wholesale  grocery,  another  was  a  member 
of  the  Typographical  Union  and  the  third 
had  worked  in  an  automobile  repair  shop. 


40      THE  MIRACLE  OF  DEMOCEACY 

"What  do  you  like  best  about  the  life 
here?"  I  asked. 

The  answers  were  dissimilar  in  form  but 
the  substance  was  the  same,  translated  thus : 
"  We  started  out  to  learn  to  do  something 
and  to  be  something  and  we  can  see  that  we 
are  making  progress." 

The  shipping  clerk  made  an  illuminating 
contribution :  "  Everybody  at  home  sym- 
pathized with  me  when  I  was  drafted.  They 
said  the  officers  would  grind  me  down  with 
drills  and  orders  until  I  was  only  a  mechan- 
ical number.  You  bet  I  hated  to  come,  but 
the  scare  tales  were  all  fakes — if  a  fellow  does 
his  duty  he's  treated  like  a  man,  exactly  the 
same  as  in  business." 

But  the  most  important  remark  came  from 
the  linotype  man  :  "  Back  home  I  didn't  pay 
much  attention  to  the  war  because  it  seemed 
so  far  away.  The  man  who  worked  on  the 
machine  next  to  mine  was  a  socialist.  He 
was  a  great  reader.  He  said  he  had  read 
everything  on  both  sides  and  that  Germany 
wasn't  understood  in  this  country  because 
all  our  news  was  doctored  by  English  in- 
fluence. His  conclusion  was  that  the  war 
was  a  rivalry  between  competing  monopolies 
and  this  country  sided  with  England  because 
our  monopolists  stood  to  win  most  if  Ger- 


THE  MIRACLE  OF  DEMOCRACY      41 

many  lost.  Well,  when  I  came  here  I  wanted 
to  know  what  kind  of  a  job  I'd  got  into. 
I've  read  everything  I  could  find  and  I 
know  now  what  we  are  up  against.  We're 
not  fighting  the  Huns,  we're  fighting  Hell, 
and  if  we  chaps  don't  know  our  business 
the  devils  will  crucify  us  as  they  did  the 
Canadian  soldiers  and  the  nuns  in  Belgium. 
Lots  of  fellows  here  are  beginning  to  under- 
stand that  too  and  that's  why  they  are  put- 
ting their  hearts  into  the  work.  But  if  you 
are  going  to  write  up  these  camps  tell  the 
Government,  or  the  Y,  or  the  folks  at  home, 
to  send  us  more  war  books,  books  full  of  the 
real  stuff ;  we  eat  'em  up.  The  high  society 
novels  they  send  are  punk  for  men  in  camp." 
Comparatively  few  of  the  men,  however, 
have  sensed  the  seriousness  of  their  job  from 
books.  Nor  did  it  come  to  many  of  them 
from  the  formal  drills,  the  setting-up  exercises 
or  the  acquisition  of  military  terms  and  habits. 
The  reality,  the  grim  but  thrilling  reality,  of 
their  business  came  from  the  bayonet.  Men 
can  stand  at  attention  without  paying  atten- 
tion, they  can  form  columns  of  fours  auto- 
matically, they  can  salute  as  a  matter  of 
easily  acquired  habit,  they  can  learn  the 
bugle  calls  by  subconscious  absorption.  But 
no  man  can  wield  the  bayonet  without  vis- 


42      THE  MIRACLE  OF  DEMOCRACY 

ualizing  death.  The  first  and  chief  duty  of 
the  bayonet  instructor  is  to  make  men  vis- 
ualize death — their  own  or  their  foe's.  "  You 
must  get  him  before  he  gets  you ;  it's  him  or 
you,  him  or  you,  him  or  you."  Then  the 
ghastly  seriousness  of  the  business  comes 
over  the  recruit ;  the  dreadful  alternative 
flashes  along  every  nerve  and  commands  the 
muscles  of  the  eyes,  the  legs  and  the  arms 
as  they  have  never  been  commanded  before. 
It  searches  his  soul  and  marks  him  as  a 
coward  or  a  man ;  it  puts  deep  lines  on  his 
face  and  galvanizes  his  will ;  it  changes  him 
almost  instantaneously  from  a  civilian  to  a 
soldier.  Discipline  is  comparatively  easy  for 
the  officers  after  the  men  have  felt  the  mean- 
ing of  cold  steel. 

When  the  soldier  is  once  made  discipline 
is  simple.  One  of  the  most  astounding 
things  about  the  cantonments  is  the  ease 
with  which  the  heterogeneous  mob  has 
settled  down  into  orderly,  obedient  and 
cheerful  military  units.  Infractions  of  mili- 
tary or  civil  law  have  been  less  in  quantity 
among  the  National  Army  men  than  in- 
fractions of  civil  law  alone  among  an  equal 
number  of  men  in  civil  life.  Major-General 
J.  Franklin  Bell  has  made  a  clear-cut  state- 
ment about  Camp  Upton  which  is  almost 


THE  MIRACLE  OF  DEMOCRACY      43 

incredible  but  which  is  indubitably  true: 
"  We  have  a  democratic  army.  We  have  an 
army  where  no  man  shirks,  but  every  one 
does  his  utmost  to  help.  Do  you  know  that 
we  have  had  the  troops  at  Camp  Upton — 
there  are  30,000  of  them — for  two  months 
and  we  have  not  had  a  single  court-martial. 
We  have  had  no  court-martial  because  no- 
body has  done  wrong.  Let  me  modify  that, 
nobody  has  done  wrong  intentionally.  We 
are  all  learning — beginners  as  it  were,  but 
all  of  us  are  doing  our  best." 

Colonel  M.  B.  Stewart,  the  Chief-of-StafT 
at  Camp  Devens,  could  not  go  as  far  as 
General  Bell  but  he  was  positively  enthusi- 
astic about  conditions  in  his  cantonment; 
"  The  temper  and  spirit  of  the  men  could  not 
be  better ;  the  Situation  here  is  excellent  in 
every  respect ;  there  is  not  an  officer  who 
is  not  highly  gratified  by  the  results  so  far 
obtained,"  he  told  me.  But  I  wanted  the 
opinion  of  some  one  who  was  actually  com- 
manding. I  chose  Colonel  A.  S.  Conklin,  of 
the  303d  Field  Artillery,  a  Regular  Army 
man  who  knows  what  an  army  means  and 
what  it  means  to  make  an  army.  He  glowed 
with  pleasure  as  he  talked  about  his  men. 
"  They  are  simply  wonderful ;  fine,  clean, 
sturdy  fellows  from  Maine,  New  Hampshire, 


44      THE  MIRACLE  OF  DEMOCRACY 

Vermont  and  other  parts  of  New  England. 
They  understand  why  they  are  here  and  are 
putting  the  best  of  body,  mind  and  heart 
into  their  work.  There  is  no  surliness,  no 
reluctance ;  indeed,  the  very  opposite  ;  when 
an  officer  has  to  correct  them  they  actually 
thank  him  and  say,  'It  won't  occur  again, 
sir.'  It  is  going  to  be  comparatively  easy  to 
make  first-class  soldiers  of  men  with  such  a 
spirit."  But  I  think  General  Kennedy,  com- 
manding at  Camp  Dix,  was  the  most  enthusi- 
astic officer  I  saw  concerning  the  drafted 
men.  He  confessed  that  he  could  not  get 
over  his  sense  of  amazement  that  his  division 
was  settling  down  to  its  work  with  such 
unreproachable  spirit.  One  could  see  satis- 
faction and  pride  in  his  face  and  feel  it  in  the 
timbre  of  his  voice.  And  yet  Camp  Dix  is 
probably  the  most  difficult  of  all  our  units, 
with  an  unusual  amount  of  unlikely  and  re- 
calcitrant material  drawn  from  the  foreign 
sections  of  industrial  communities.  Officers 
of  various  grades  and  branches  of  the  service 
in  Camp  Gordon  gave  me  exactly  the  same 
impression  about  conditions  in  their  canton- 
ment. 

11  Barbed  wire  twenty  feet  high  and  ten 
feet  deep  to  keep  the  men  from  deserting  ! " 
Never  was  a  prediction  wider  of  the  mark ; 


THE  MIRACLE  OF  DEMOCRACY      45 

never  was  a  fear  more  completely  wiped  out. 
And  yet  not  one  of  those  hundreds  of  thou- 
sands of  men  went  into  a  cantonment  on  his 
own  initiative  ;  Uncle  Sam  stretched  out  his 
hand,  tore  them  up  by  the  roots  from  their 
familiar  and  well-loved  environment,  dropped 
them  into  an  ugly  and  comfortless  place, 
abrogated  the  civil  liberties  which  they  had 
been  brought  up  to  look  upon  as  their  in- 
alienable rights,  put  them  to  work  at  rough, 
unaccustomed  and  monotonous  tasks  and 
jield  before  their  eyes,  as  the  culmination  of 
it  all,  pain,  gas  suffocation,  mutilation  and 
death  in  a  foreign  land  at  the  hands  of  a 
brutalized  foe.  And  yet, — this  is  the  miracle 
of  democracy — the  cantonments  are  probably 
the  most  contented  and  cheerful  spots  in 
America,  where  laughter,  cheers  and  songs 
ripple  or  ring  through  the  air  a  hundred 
times  a  day. 

What  wrought  the  miracle  ?  Many  things. 
First  and  foremost  I  put  the  solicitude  of  the 
authorities  for  the  welfare  of  the  men.  Prob- 
ably forty  per  cent,  of  those  drafted  had  not 
been  the  objects  of  care  since  infancy.  But  no 
sooner  did  they  arrive  in  camp  than  all  kinds 
of  mysteriously  inquisitive  officers  began 
to  show  a  persistent  interest  in  them.  Were 
they  clean?  Some  were  not.  Some  had 


46      THE  MIEACLE  OF  DEMOCEACY 

never  been  bathed  in  their  lives,  or  at  least 
since  babyhood.  A  medical  officer  at  Camp 
Dix  told  me  of  one  recruit  who  was  so  abso- 
lutely filthy  that  no  one  would  touch  him ; 
the  hair  on  his  body  had  grown  back  into  his 
skin ;  he  was  alive  with  vermin.  They  had 
to  put  him  on  the  ground  and  scour  him  with 
brooms  and  soft  soap.  Following  the  clean- 
liness inquisitors  came  the  uniformed  dentists 
who  examined  every  tooth,  extracting  some, 
filling  others  and  issuing  peremptory  com- 
mands about  tooth-brushes.  Then  another 
uniformed  under-study  of  Providence  insisted 
upon  knowing  the  condition  of  the  man's 
feet,  showing  an  incomprehensible  concern 
for  ingrowing  toe  nails.  Was  not  all  this 
enough  ?  No,  it  was  only  the  beginning. 
The  recruit  could  not  drink  water  unless  it  had 
been  analyzed,  he  could  not  eat  meals  which 
had  not  been  tested  first  by  scrupulous  of- 
ficial palates,  he  could  not  sleep  in  his  bunk 
unless  it  were  certified  to  as  being  correctly 
made,  he  could  not  buy  anything  at  the  Post 
Exchange  except  what  had  been  allowed  on 
sale  as  pure,  he  could  not  even  march  or 
drill  with  his  mouth  open  for  fear  of  germs. 
So  the  men  began  to  realize  their  value,  they 
were  worth  Uncle  Sam's  most  constant  scien- 
tific attention.  Instead  of  irritating  the  men 


THE  MTEACLE  OF  DEMOCRACY      47 

it  gave  them  a  new  sense  of  self-esteem. 
Possibly  they  wondered  why  they  had  not 
been  worthy  of  as  much  solicitude  while  they 
were  mere  citizens,  but  at  any  rate  they  were 
now  aware  that  they  were  valuable  assets. 
The  flattery  pleased  them  even  though  they 
seemed  to  chafe  under  its  application. 

Naturally  and  logically  there  followed  the 
buoyancy  of  abounding  health.  The  cleanli- 
ness, the  simple  but  wholesome  fare,  the 
regularity  of  exercise,  the  open  air,  brought 
something  absolutely  new  to  a  majority  of 
the  men — they  felt  the  surge  of  a  rich  vitality 
in  their  veins.  Thousands  and  thousands 
who  had  only  subsisted  hitherto  began  really 
to  live.  They  had  come  from  the  gloomy 
canyons  of  our  big  cities,  they  had  been 
torn  from  the  cubbyholes  of  industrial  offices, 
they  had  left  forever  the  lung-clogging  lint 
of  the  mill,  they  had  jumped  the  counter  and 
bade  good-bye  to  the  effeminacy  of  the  de- 
partment store ;  yes,  I  feel  certain  that  a 
majority  of  the  men  in  the  cantonments  had 
been  liberated  from  haunts  or  occupations 
which  sapped  their  health  and  within  a  month 
had  felt  themselves  to  be  reborn. 

There  will  doubtless  be  many  National 
Guard  officers  who  will  receive  my  next 
statement  with  incredulity.  I  believe  the  in- 


48      THE  MIEACLE  OF  DEMOCRACY 

fluence  of  the  Reserve  officers  has  been  a 
most  potent  factor  in  the  rapid  moulding  of 
the  drafted  men.  In  the  National  Guard 
camps  the  Reserve  officers  did  not  take  their 
places  with  ease.  Plattsburg  and  Madison 
had  not  given  them  experience  in  handling 
men  who  had  just  come  back  from  Border 
service  and  many  of  the  Non-Coms  were 
more  proficient  than  the  wearers  of  brand 
new  uniforms.  But  in  the  National  Army 
cantonments  the  Reserve  officers  and  the 
drafted  men  were  beginning  together  and 
each  knew  it.  There  was  mutual  tolerance  ; 
when  the  officer  muddled  his  commands  and 
tangled  his  men  in  a  hopeless  formation,  it 
was  received  with  humor  rather  than  scorn ; 
hauteur  slipped  out  of  the  budding  officer's 
bearing.  The  Regular  Army  officers  in  the 
cantonments  spoke  much  more  confidently 
of  the  Plattsburg  probationer  than  did  the 
National  Guard  officers  in  the  camps.  Such 
a  psychological  situation  is  possible  only  in 
a  democracy.  And  the  Reserve  officers  are 
keenly  anxious  to  grow  just  a  little  faster 
than  their  men ;  they  have  a  passion  for 
leadership  which  springs  from  a  genuinely 
sacrificial  motive.  They  want  their  units  to 
overtake  the  National  Guard  and  stand 
abreast  of  the  Regular  Army  as  quickly  as 


THE  MIRACLE  OF  DEMOCRACY      49 

possible,  that  when  they  lead  their  men  into 
action  no  one  will  be  able  to  make  any  in- 
vidious distinctions  between  the  types  of 
troops  which  face  the  common  foe. 

Still,  not  all  of  these  military  considerations 
combined  could  have  achieved  the  happy  re- 
sults so  noticeable  in  the  National  Army  ; 
something  more,  something  different,  was 
needed.  Enforced  cleanliness,  an  accession 
of  health,  abundance  of  wholesome  food  and 
a  consciousness  of  duty  faithfully  performed 
cannot  assuage  the  pangs  of  homesickness 
or  compensate  for  the  involuntary  break  in 
lifelong  habits.  There  was  a  chasm  to  be 
bridged.  Fortunately  democracy  is  the  real 
Pontifex  Maximus.  The  people  of  America 
said  :  "  These  boys  are  ours  ;  we  give  them 
to  the  great  crusade  of  our  own  free-will ; 
we  must  do  everything  conceivable  and  pos- 
sible to  make  them  feel  that  the  uniform  has 
not  lifted  them  out  of  the  normal  life  of  the 
nation."  So  the  people  immediately  set 
about  to  normalize  the  environment  of  the 
soldiers  and  thus  head  off  any  drift  toward 
militarism.  They  fraternized  with  the  men 
wherever  khaki  was  seen  ;  they  opened  their 
homes  on  Sundays  to  total  strangers  as  if 
the  visitors  were  their  own  kith  and  kin  ; 
they  hung  out  service  flags  and  were  as 


50      THE  MIRACLE  OF  DEMOCRACY 

proud  of  the  star  which  symbolized  the 
drafted  man  as  of  the  one  which  represented 
the  Regular  Army  officer. 

This  response  of  the  people  produced  im- 
mediate results.  Officers  of  the  Federal 
Service  found  state  and  city  officials  ready 
to  cooperate  in  eliminating  the  grosser  temp- 
tations from  the  communities  adjacent  to  the 
camps.  Haunts  of  vice  which  had  flourished 
under  local  political  protection  for  decades 
were  effectually  closed.  Except  through  the 
efforts  of  some  degenerate  boot-leggers  and 
the  mistaken  generosity  of  occasional  foolish 
friends,  liquor  was  made  inaccessible  to  the 
soldiers.  Clubs,  lodges,  chapters  of  fraternal 
organizations  and  a  multitude  of  benevolent 
societies  held  open  house  for  officers  and  en- 
listed men.  Churches  suspended  their  stereo- 
typed activities  and  concentrated  upon  pro- 
viding entertainment,  comfort  and  inspiration 
for  the  army.  Everywhere  I  have  found 
nothing  but  respect  and  affection  ;  the  camps 
are  family  affairs  upon  a  national  scale.  If 
the  Red  Cross  asked  for  one  hundred  million 
dollars  the  people  insisted  upon  making  it 
one  hundred  and  twenty-five  millions.  If 
the  Young  Men's  Christian  Association 
needed  thirty-five  million  dollars  the  people 
poured  out  more  than  fifty  millions,  and  said, 


THE  MIRACLE  OF  DEMOCEACY      61 

"  Come  again."  Every  fund  projected  for 
the  benefit  of  the  army  is  oversubscribed. 
The  reflex  of  this  upon  the  men  in  the  camps 
is  incalculable.  It  is  not  a  cold  storage  Con- 
gress disgorging  money  reluctantly  under 
executive  pressure,  but  a  nation-wide  offer- 
ing of  affection — it  is  largesse  de  luxe.  The 
spirit  of  it  thrills  back  through  the  canton- 
ments and  the  men  say  in  their  hearts,  "  We 
will  be  worthy."  That  is  what  makes  an 
army,  an  instantaneous  and  an  invincible 
army,  in  a  land  where  all  the  traditions  of 
thought  and  action  have  hitherto  been  set 
against  militarism. 

While  a  vast  amount  of  this  national  serv- 
ice for  the  national  army  has  been  spon- 
taneous and  undirected,  it  is  only  natural 
that  the  larger  part  of  it  should  be  organized 
in  order  to  function  most  effectively.  Hence 
the  War  Department's  Commission  on  Train- 
ing Camp  Activities,  Mr.  Raymond  B.  Fos- 
dick,  Chairman.  The  work  of  the  Commis- 
sion is  to  coordinate  every  available  force  in 
American  life  for  the  physical,  mental  and 
moral  benefit  of  the  soldier-body.  It  aims 
to  fill  every  spare  minute  of  camp  life  with 
occupations  which  meet  the  appetites  of  men 
accustomed  to  free,  civil  life  ;  to  eliminate  or 
reduce  to  a  minimum  the  evils  which  have 


52      THE  MIRACLE  OF  DEMOCRACY 

always  hovered  like  vampires  around  mili- 
tary establishments ;  and  finally,  by  a  feder- 
ated pressure  oi  healthy  influences,  to 
strengthen  and  increase  the  moral  health  of 
the  hundreds  of  thousands  of  men  whom 
the  nation  has  called  to  specialized  citizen 
service. 

Undoubtedly  many  parents,  wives,  sisters 
and  friends  of  the  men  have  been  seriously 
disturbed  by  the  wild  statements  concerning 
immorality  on  the  part  of  the  soldiers.  For 
six  weeks  I  have  made  close  investigation  of 
such  charges  and  without  the  slightest  hesi- 
tation I  brand  them  as  infernal  lies.  Here 
and  there,  now  and  then,  a  soldier  trans- 
gresses ;  any  one  would  be  a  fool  and  an 
ignoramus  to  believe  otherwise.  But  let  the 
reader  think  out  the  situation.  A  camp  of 
forty  thousand  men  between  the  ages  of 
twenty-one  and  thirty-one  implies  the  most 
virile  section  of  a  city  of  more  than  three 
hundred  thousand  inhabitants.  But  no  camp 
produces  in  a  month  a  fraction  of  the  im- 
morality practiced  in  such  a  city  in  a  week. 
Facilities,  opportunities  and  temptations, 
open  to  civilians  all  the  while  in  a  large  civil 
population,  are  not  presented  to  the  soldiers. 
Only  the  most  hardened  and  desperately  in- 
sistent can  find  the  few  and  well-hidden  run- 


THE  MIRACLE  OF  DEMOCRACY      63 

ways  of  vice.  The  bulk  of  the  men's  time  is 
.preempted  by  rigid  military  duties  ;  the  larger 
part  of  the  balance  of  their  time  is  filled  by 
occupations  of  the  most  wholesome  nature 
provided  within  the  camp  by  the  various  or- 
ganizations working  together  under  Mr.  Fos- 
dick's  Commission.  Occasionally  the  men 
go  to  the  near-by  communities  and  there  the 
vigilance  of  the  Government  has  practically 
driven  away  all  commercialized  vice,  and  has 
made  it  next  to  impossible  for  a  soldier  to 
obtain  a  drink  of  liquor.  The  communities 
near  the  camps  are  the  most  vice-free  and 
orderly  places  I  know  in  America  or  in  any 
other  land.  To  assert  that  our  American 
moral  sanctities  are  being  violated  wholesale 
by  the  soldiers  is  a  vile  insult  to  American 
womanhood  and  a  form  of  treason  toward 
the  Government,  and  every  such  accuser 
should  be  tried  instantly  as  a  public  enemy. 

I  saw  Mr.  Fosdick  on  the  subject  in  his 
Washington  office.  He  is  one  of  the  calmest 
and  keenest  men  I  have  ever  met,  yet  he  is 
vibratirig  with  a  splendid  moral  enthusiasm. 
Here  is  what  he  said  : 

"  The  War  Department  has  three  lines  of 
defense  against  the  evils  traditionally  associ- 
ated with  armies  and  training  camps.  The 
first  line  consists  of  the  positive,  recreational 


54      THE  MIEACLE  OF  DEMOCBACY 

activities  designed  to  take  the  place  of  the 
influences  we  are  trying  to  eliminate. 

"  I  remember  standing  in  the  street  of 
Columbus,  N.  M.,  shortly  after  Villa  dev- 
astated the  village.  Five  thousand  troops 
were  encamped  near  by.  There  was  nothing 
whatever  in  town  to  interest  the  men  in  their 
hours  of  leisure — no  moving  picture  shows, 
no  reading  rooms,  no  places  to  read  and 
smoke,  no  homes  in  which  they  would  be 
welcome,  not  even  a  place  to  sit  down.  In 
fact,  there  was  nothing  at  all  in  town  except 
a  few  dirty  saloons,  and  a  red  light  district. 
That  these  places  were  liberally  patronized 
was  due  to  the  fact  that  there  was  nothing  to 
compete  with  them. 

"  It  is  not  going  to  do  any  good  merely  to 
set  up  verboten  signs  along  the  road.  Mili- 
tary regulations  against  these  evils  can  be 
made  ad  infmitum,  but  nothing  will  be  ac- 
complished unless  we  can  positively  create 
wholesome,  red-blooded  sources  of  recreation 
and  entertainment  for  our  troops  during  their 
leisure  hours.  Otherwise,  we  are  not  even 
going  to  make  a  dent  in  the  twin  problem  of 
alcohol  and  prostitution. 

"  Obviously,  therefore,  the  Commission  on 
Training  Camp  Activities  is  more  interested 
in  its  positive  recreational  program,  both 


THE  MIEACLE  OF  DEMOCEACY      55 

within  and  without  the  camps,  than  it  is  in 
anything  else.  This  is  our  first  line  of  de- 
fense. 

"  Our  second  line  of  defense,  in  case  our 
first  fails,  lies  in  the  police  measures  which 
we  are  taking  to  surround  the  men  with  a 
healthy  environment.  The  powers  conferred 
upon  the  War  Department  by  Sections  12 
and  13  of  the  Military  Draft  Law  have  been 
of  great  assistance  in  curbing  the  evils ;  and 
the  machinery  of  the  Department  of  Justice, 
of  the  Intelligence  Department  of  the  Army, 
and  of  many  private  organizations,  such  as 
the  American  Social  Hygiene  Association, 
the  Committee  of  Fourteen  of  New  York, 
and  the  Committee  of  Fifteen  of  Chicago, 
have  been  enlisted  in  the  fight.  Through  its 
own  agents  in  the  field,  the  Commission  is 
keeping  in  constant  touch  with  the  situation 
surrounding  every  military  camp  in  the 
United  States. 

"  As  concrete  examples  of  what  has  been 
accomplished  may  be  mentioned  the  closing 
of  red  light  districts  in  the  following  cities  : 
Deming,  N.  M.,  El  Paso,  Waco,  San  Antonio, 
Fort  Worth,  and  Houston,  Texas ;  Hatties- 
burg,  Miss. ;  Spartanburg,  S.  C. ;  Norfolk 
and  Petersburg,  Va.  ;  Jacksonville,  Fla.  ; 
Alexandria,  La. ;  Savannah,  Ga. ;  Charleston, 


56      THE  MIRACLE  OF  DEMOCRACY 

Colurnbia  and  Greenville,  S.  C. ;  Douglas, 
Ariz. ;  Louisville,  Ky. ;  and  Montgomery, 
Ala.  New  Orleans  has  passed  an  ordinance 
which  will  wipe  out  its  red  light  district  on 
or  about  November  i5th.  Many  cities  in 
which  no  red  light  districts  were  formally 
tolerated  have,  at  the  instance  of  the  Com- 
mission, abolished  their  open  houses  of 
prostitution. 

"  The  third  line  of  defense,  in  case  the  first 
two  fail,  as  far  as  disease  is  concerned,  lies  in 
the  very  excellent  plans  for  prophylactic  work 
laid  out  by  the  Surgeon  General's  Depart- 
ment. Not  only  have  we  an  inescapable 
responsibility  to  the  families  in  the  com- 
munities from  which  our  young  men  are 
selected,  in  keeping  their  environment  clean, 
but  from  the  standpoint  of  our  duty  and 
determination  to  create  an  efficient  army  we 
are  bound  as  a  military  necessity  to  do 
everything  in  our  power  to  promote  the 
health  and  conserve  the  vitality  of  the  men 
in  the  training  camps.  This  war  is  going  to 
be  won  on  the  basis  of  man  power,  and  we 
cannot  afford  to  lose  a  single  soldier  through 
any  cause  with  which  medical  science  can 
successfully  grapple. 

"  These,  then,  are  the  three  lines  of  defense 
which  the  Government  is  setting  up  to  protect 


THE  MIRACLE  OF  DEMOCRACY      57 

the  character  and  efficiency  of  its  troops.  In 
so  far  as  it  is  humanly  possible  to  accomplish 
it,  we  are  determined  that  our  young  men 
shall  come  back  from  this  war  with  no  scars 
except  those  won  in  honorable  conflict." 

As  a  result  of  visits  to  many  camps,  search- 
ing investigations  in  the  near-by  communities, 
conversations  with  scores  of  officers  and  hun- 
dreds of  enlisted  men,  and  a  careful  question- 
ing of  various  civilians  who  know  the  military 
situation  intimately,  I  believe  that  Uncle  Sam 
is  going  to  send  back  to  their  families  and 
communities  hundreds  of  thousands  and  pos- 
sibly millions  of  men,  infinitely  better  qualified 
physically,  mentally  and  morally  for  the  duties 
of  citizenship  in  a  democracy  than  they  were 
•when  called  to  the  colors. 


Ill 

Democratizing  the  Army  to 
Save  Democracy 


Ill 

DEMOCRATIZING  THE  ARMY  TO 
SAVE  DEMOCRACY 

ALL  my  preconceptions  went  by  the 
board  when  I  settled  down  for  a 
while  with  my  old  regiment,  the 
Thirteenth  Pennsylvania  Infantry,  at  Camp 
Hancock,  Augusta,  Georgia.  I  had  known 
the  Thirteenth  intimately,  from  ten  years  of 
service  as  chaplain.  When  I  laid  down  my 
commission  about  four  years  ago,  it  was  a 
typical  National  Guard  regiment,  well  of- 
ficered, proud  of  its  traditions,  but  always 
somewhat  ragged  about  the  edges.  Our  an- 
nual encampments  were  jolly  affairs,  streaked 
with  conviviality  (not  to  any  excess,  as  Na- 
tional Guard  units  then  went),  and  the  serious 
side  of  soldiering  was  difficult  to  sustain. 
The  commissioned  officers  were  wholesome 
fellows,  but  civil  occupations  for  fifty  weeks 
of  the  year  precluded  the  possibility  of  focus- 
ing much  attention  upon  their  men. 

It  so  happened  that  I  was  with  the  regi- 
ment on  October  17  of  this  year,  when  the 
higher    command    moved   about   seventeen 
61 


62        DEMOCRATIZING  THE  AKMY 

hundred  men  with  their  subalterns  over  to 
another  regiment.  The  transfer  was  a  heart- 
breaking affair — a  mutilation  which  left  the 
remaining  officers  stunned.  One  major  con- 
fessed that  he  had  to  go  to  his  quarters  and 
blubber.  I  met  the  captain  of  the  machine 
gun  company  and  asked  him  to  take  me 
through  his  company  street,  as  such  a  regi- 
mental unit  had  been  unknown  in  my  day. 
At  first  he  demurred,  then  reconsidered.  "  I 
might  as  well  go  down  there  now ;  I've  got 
to  do  it  some  time."  The  mess  hall  was 
there  and  the  equipment  tents  and  the  store- 
house. Beyond  those  only  four  tents  stood 
in  the  street.  Then  tears  came  into  the 
captain's  eyes  and  a  lump  in  his  throat. 
"  Only  twelve  men  left  out  of  the  com- 
pany ! "  he  gulped.  "  Oh  !  isn't  it  awful, 
after  the  work  I've  put  into  those  men  for 
fifteen  months  1 " 

Such  is  the  new  spirit  of  the  army.  The 
officers  are  brooding  over  their  men  like  a 
hen  over  her  fluffy  chicks.  They  know  each 
man  intimately,  his  eccentricities  and  idio- 
syncrasies ;  they  guard  him  against  his  weak- 
nesses and  encourage  his  virtues ;  they  are  as 
solicitous  about  a  blister  on  his  foot  or  a  cav- 
ity in  a  tooth  as  they  used  to  be  about  the 
rating  of  the  spring  inspection  of  the  entire 


TO  SAVE  DEMOCKACY  63 

company  in  the  days  of  old.  The  commis- 
sioned officers  and  even  the  battalion  com- 
mander eat  from  the  same  mess  as  their  men. 
All  are  bound  together  by  vital  ties,  genuinely 
human  affinities,  and  the  result  is  a  miracle 
in  morale.  That  is  the  great  outstanding 
feature  of  the  new  armies ;  if  you  have  had 
any  experience  of  military  life,  you  feel  it  the 
moment  you  enter  the  training  camp. 

While  writing  about  the  old  Thirteenth 
Regiment  I  may  as  well  make  another  start- 
ling statement.  Although  at  war  strength, 
there  has  not  been  a  new  case  of  venereal 
disease  discovered  in  the  six  weeks  they  have 
been  at  Camp  Hancock.  The  statement 
seemed  incredible,  so  I  went  to  the  divisional 
surgeon,  Colonel  W.  E.  Keller,  and  verified 
it  with  my  own  eyes  on  the  daily  health  re- 
ports at  headquarters.  Such  a  thing  is  al- 
most beyond  belief.  The  Judge  Advocate 
also  told  me  that  in  six  weeks  there  had  been 
only  four  cases  of  "  drunk  and  disorderly  "  in 
the  entire  division  of  27,000  men.  Naturally 
I  wanted  to  know  what  lay  behind  this  almost 
immaculate  condition. 

The  little  city  of  Augusta  is  only  four  miles 
from  the  camp,  and  I  determined  to  make  an 
investigation.  A  newspaper  man,  writing 
for  a  syndicate  of  papers  in  a  Northern  city, 


64        DEMOCRATIZING  THE  ARMY 

helped  me  considerably.  "This  is  a  Sunday- 
school  outfit  with  a  vengeance,"  he  said. 
"Where  can  you  get  a  drink?  Why,  old 
man,  you  will  have  to  go  back  home  for  it ! 
I've  been  here  six  weeks,  and  I  don't  know 
where  you  could  get  a  '  pony '  to  save  your 
life.  There  was  a  man  here  last  week  who 
had  a  bottle  in  his  room,  but  he's  gone  now. 
They  tell  me  that  if  you  make  friends  with 
exactly  the  right  native,  and  he's  dead  sure 
you're  not  a  plain-clothes  man,  he  might  get 
a  bottle  of  rye  for  yc^ ,  but  it  would  cost 
from  six  to  ten  bucks  and  be  damned  poor 
stuff  at  that!  And  women?  Why,  there 
isn't  a  house  in  town,  and  I  doubt  whether 
there  is  a  professional  in  the  region.  The 
local  authorities  have  cooperated  with  the 
Fosdick  Commission  and  cleaned  the  place 
up  as  I  never  saw  a  place  cleaned  up  before. 
I  don't  mean  there's  absolutely  nothing  going 
on,  of  course.  Soldiers  sometimes  find  what 
they  are  looking  for,  but  it  is  clandestine  and 
occasional.  There  is  no  commercialized 
~:ice."  Further  inquiry  about  town,  interro- 
gations of  hack-drivers  and  likely  loafers,  and 
a  more  careful  questioning  of  the  military 
police  confirmed  the  correspondent's  state- 
ment. 

I  doubt  whether  any  city  near  a  large  mill- 


TO  SAVE  DEMOCEACT  65 

tary  establishment  was  ever  as  clean  as 
Augusta.  I  found  similar  conditions  in 
Spartanburg,  South  Carolina,  but  that  is  a 
much  smaller  place,  and  therefore  more  easily 
handled.  I  am  now  convinced  that  some- 
thing more  than  the  climate  determined  the 
choice  of  those  Southern  States  as  the  sites 
for  the  majority  of  our  camps  and  canton- 
ments. Where  liquor  is  absolutely  banished 
from  a  region,  the  moral  problems  of  the 
military  commanders  are  reduced  almost  to 
the  minimum.  And  I  write  the  following  de- 
liberately about  Camp  Hancock:  That  I 
would  rather  intrust  the  moral  character  of 
my  boy  to  that  camp  than  to  any  college  or 
university  I  know.  This  does  not  cast  any 
unusually  dark  shadow  upon  the  educational 
institutions  of  the  country,  but  they  have 
never  possessed  the  absolute  power  to  con- 
trol their  environment  that  is  now  held  by 
the  War  Department.  And  it  does  not  mean 
that  Camp  Hancock  is  conspicuously  better 
than  the  other  Southern  camps.  It  simply 
means  that  I  had  unusual  facilities  for  discov- 
ering everything  I  wanted  to  know  in  and 
about  Camp  Hancock,  through  personal  con- 
nections all  the  way  down  from  the  divisional 
headquarters  to  the  enlisted  men  in  the  com- 
pany street. 


66        DEMOCRATIZING  THE  ARMY 

Soldiers  are  supposed  to  be  inveterate  and 
irredeemable  grumblers.  But  if  you  want  to 
see  a  group  of  men  without  grouchiness  go 
to  Camp  Hancock.  Quite  naturally,  the  men 
of  the  National  Guard  camps  are  more  cheer- 
ful than  drafted  men  ;  they  enlisted  from  in- 
clination or  patriotism,  after  counting  the 
cost.  But  the  cheerfulness  is  not  all  native  ; 
it  is  largely  the  consequence  of  satisfactory 
conditions.  A  sandy  soil  gives  clean,  dry 
streets  and  roads;  even  the  enlisted  men 
have  electric  light  in  their  tents ;  the  Post  Ex- 
change sells  them  all  the  little  luxuries  of  life 
at  a  reasonable  price ;  the  food  is  good  and 
plentiful,  as  I  found  by  messing  with  the 
privates ;  play  is  liberally  interspersed  with 
work  ;  the  officers  show  a  spirit  of  comradery  ; 
health  is  far  above  normal ;  and  the  great 
adventure  looms  up  as  a  real  experience  of 
the  soul. 

The  last  item  above  I  use  after  careful  re- 
flection. When  the  majority  of  the  National 
Guard  enlisted,  they  knew  the  issues.  But 
no  chances  are  taken.  In  one  of  the  vast 
Chautauqua  tents  of  the  Young  Men's  Chris- 
tian Association  I  sat  on  the  back  row  and 
listened  to  a  lecture  by  Frank  Dixon,  of  New 
York,  on  "  The  Causes  of  the  War."  Three 
thousand  men  in  khaki  also  listened  and  ap- 


TO  SAVE  DEMOCRACY  67 

plauded.  The  speaker  told  about  little  Bel- 
gium, the  men  of  Louvain  and  Antwerp,  and 
how  they  fought  and  died  for  the  sanctity  of 
international  law  ;  he  pictured  the  raped 
women  and  the  orphaned  children  and  the 
desolated  homes;  he  described  the  ruined 
churches  and  demolished  universities  and 
razed  libraries  ;  he  stated  the  law  of  vicarious 
suffering — how  those  splendid  heroes  had 
borne  all  and  given  all  to  save  us  from  the 
barbarities  of  a  false  principle  of  self-expres- 
sion known  as  Kultur ;  he  sketched  how 
England  had  obeyed  the  rule  of  honor  when 
self-interest  told  her  to  stand  aside ;  he  la- 
mented our  early  dimness  of  vision  concern- 
ing the  issues  involved,  and  our  slow  enlight- 
enment and  ultimate  awakening ;  and  he  fin- 
ished by  proving  that  everything  worth  liv- 
ing for,  worth  fighting  for,  worth  dying  for, 
was  at  stake.  In  conclusion  he  told  the  men 
that  their  courage,  their  devotion,  their  disci- 
pline, their  toll  of  casualties,  were  necessary, 
in  the  last  ditch,  to  save  civilization  and 
Christianity  from  falling  forever  under  the 
blighting  curse  of  a  triumphantly  brutal  pa- 
ganism. When  the  men  left  the  tent,  their 
shoulders  were  squarer  and  their  jaws  firmer 
and  their  eyes  brighter — they  were  crusaders, 
and  the  pride  of  their  consecration  was  clear. 


68         DEMOCRATIZING  THE  ARMY 

Imagine  two  square  miles  of  teeming  man- 
hood, firmly  organized,  and  yet  bearing  every 
evidence  of  care-free  liberty.  Nothing  in  the 
camp  is  left  to  chance,  and  yet  nowhere  and 
at  no  time  do  you  feel  the  taint  of  militarism. 
Here  is  a  platoon — as  large  as  a  pre-war 
company — just  finishing  an  extended-order 
drill.  It  has  been  hard,  grinding  work  under 
a  peremptory-voiced  platoon  commander. 
Suddenly  the  men  come  to  attention  in 
close  formation.  An  athletic  director  ap- 
pears, takes  charge  from  a  platform,  and 
gives  them  fifteen  minutes  of  calisthenics. 
Then — and  you  can  hardly  believe  your  eyes 
— the  platoon  begins  to  play  leapfrog.  This 
goes  on  for  a  few  moments,  and  a  couple 
of  medicine  balls  appear  and  for  ten  min- 
utes more  these  are  hurled  from  man  to  man 
with  lightning  rapidity.  Immediately  follow- 
ing there  is  a  game  very  much  like  drop-the- 
handkerchief,  in  which  the  participants  chase 
about  to  find  the  vacant  place.  The  air  is 
full  of  laughter,  the  soldiers  are  romping 
children,  the  drill  monotony  is  forgotten, 
and  when  it  is  over  the  men  rush  to  their 
shower-baths  and  then  sit  down  to  mess 
with  the  appetites  of  tigers.  Play  is  organ- 
ized in  all  the  military  establishments.  More 
than  thirty  games  have  been  invented,  suit- 


TO  SAVE  DEMOCRACY  69 

able  for  company,  platoon,  or  squad  partici- 
pation. 

In  Camp  Hancock,  Walter  Camp,  Jr.,  of 
Yale,  is  the  divisional  director,  and  his  quar- 
ters are  with  the  commanding  general's  staff. 
I  talked  with  him  about  his  work.  He  has 
organized  the  division  with  brigade,  battal- 
ion, regimental,  and  company  directors.  Mr. 
Camp's  enthusiasm  is  sublime.  "  These  rec- 
reational interludes,"  he  said,  "are  getting 
the  men  into  a  volitional  condition  in  which 
they  will  respond  quickly  to  almost  any 
moral  ideal.  We  are  working  in  closest 
harmony  with  the  officers,  on  the  one  hand, 
and  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  physical  directors,  on 
the  other.  We  are  humanizing  soldiering. 
One  regimental  commander  said  to  me  yes- 
terday, after  a  series  of  company  games: 
'  That's  the  greatest  thing  I  ever  saw  in  the 
army.  No  man  can  have  a  grouch  after 
going  through  those  games.'  We  are  laying 
great  stress  also  upon  competitive  athletics 
—baseball,  football,  basket-ball,  and  boxing, 
by  companies,  regiments,  and  brigades." 

I  happened  to  be  having  luncheon  with 
Commanding  General  Price  and  his  staff 
when  the  divisional  adjutant  gave  out  a  no- 
tice :  "  The  General  expects  every  member  of 
his  staff  to  report  at  5  P.  M.  for  calisthenics." 


70         DEMOCRATIZING  THE  AEMY 

Such  a  sight  was  something  not  to  be  missed, 
and  I  reported  also.  About  thirty  men  lined 
up  under  command  of  Walter  Camp.  Now 
men  who  are  as  near  the  top  of  the  service 
as  the  divisional  staff  are  not  youngsters,  and 
many  of  them  are  by  no  means  slim.  For 
nearly  half  an  hour  they  were  put  through 
their  paces — arm  and  leg  and  neck  exercises, 
abdominal  and  back  exercises,  lung  and  liver 
exercises;  they  puffed  and  panted  and 
grunted  and  groaned,  but  they  went  on  to 
the  end,  even  the  baldest  and  the  fattest  of 
them.  Then  they  chose  sides  and  played  the 
most  riotous  game  of  baseball  I  have  ever 
seen  ;  and,  as  I  had  been  chosen  umpire,  there 
was  nothing  that  escaped  me.  Military  titles 
were  dropped  entirely,  one  of  the  higher  kind 
even  calling  a  ranking  officer  a  "lobster" ; 
they  united  vociferously  in  a  demand  to  kill 
the  umpire,  and  far  be  it  from  me  to  tell  either 
the  score  or  the  number  of  errors !  They 
were  just  boys  again,  with  every  bit  of  their 
healthy  human  nature  unleashed.  Those  are 
the  men  who  are  making  our  new  armies, 
who  will  lead  them  onto  the  battle-fields  of 
Europe,  who  will  watch  and  ward  them  day 
and  night  until  they  return  the  men  to  their 
communities  and  families.  It  is  all  so  Ameri- 
can, so  human — so  utterly  different  from  the 


TO  SAVE  DEMOCRACY  71 

horrible  Frankenstein  monster  which  the 
pacifists  describe  as  "  the  devilish,  dehuman- 
izing military  machine  which  crushes  indi- 
viduality and  kills  all  natural  instincts." 

One  evening  I  was  sitting  under  the  fly  of 
Brigadier-General  Stillwell's  tent  talking 
about  the  old  and  the  new  days  of  the  army. 
I  had  told  him  of  all  the  plans  unfolded  to 
me  in  the  War  Department  by  Mr.  Raymond 
B.  Fosdick  for  training-camp  activities.  The 
General  is  a  man  of  few  words  but  of  much 
thought,  an  officer  always  loved  by  the  men 
who  have  served  with  and  under  him.  Sud- 
denly he  turned,  and,  using  the  title  that  I 
bore  for  ten  years  on  his  staff,  said :  "  Cap- 
tain, Uncle  Sam  seems  to  be  making  a  Na- 
tional University  as  well  as  a  National  Army." 
That  is  almost  literally  true.  There  are 
academic  subjects  taught  in  the  class-rooms 
of  our  universities  which  will  not  be  provided 
for  the  soldiers,  but  if  education  means  "  to 
educe  " — to  draw  out  qualities  of  the  mind, 
heart,  and  body  by  legitimate  exercise — then 
the  hundreds  of  thousands  of  men  in  our  Na- 
tional armies  will  receive  an  education  such 
as  not  one  in  a  hundred  would  have  obtained 
in  civil  life. 

Apparently  the  Commission  on  Training 
Camp  Activities  has  thought  of  everything 


72         DEMOCRATIZING  THE  ARMY 

and  planned  for  everything.  Some  of  the 
features  are  not  yet  in  effect,  but  enough  is 
in  operation  to  prove  that  every  man  in  camp 
and  cantonment  will  be  reached  ultimately 
by  many  influences  which  make  for  the  type 
of  manhood  a  democracy  demands.  There 
are  lectures,  plays,  movies,  and  entertain- 
ments every  single  night  in  Camp  Hancock. 
Over  a  thousand  men  are  studying  French 
under  teachers  who  are  instructed  by  a  pro- 
fessor of  modern  languages  from  the  Pennsyl- 
vania State  University.  Classes  in  higher 
mathematics  are  being  held  for  the  engineers. 
At  present  the  Young  Men's  Christian  As- 
sociation is  doing  a  number  of  things  which 
will  be  taken  over  by  special  units  of  the  Fos- 
dick  Commission  at  a  later  date.  Four  thou- 
sand books  per  week  are  being  circulated 
from  the  five  Young  Men's  Christian  Associa- 
tion centres.  Gilbert  and  Sullivan's  opera, 
"  The  Mikado,"  given  by  a  full  professional 
cast,  made  a  week's  stand  in  the  camp,  and 
"The  Old  Homestead"  was  billed  for  the 
immediate  future.  A  thrift  campaign  resulted 
in  $35,000  being  sent  home  in  one  week  by 
the  men  through  the  Young  Men's  Christian 
Association,  which  sells  express  company 
checks  in  each  of  its  buildings.  Singing  by 
companies  is  being  taught  by  Professor 


TO  SAVE  DEMOCBACY  73 

Tebbs,  the  leader  of  music  in  the  public 
schools  of  Dayton,  Ohio. 

Trench  and  Camp  is  the  name  of  an  eight- 
page  weekly  magazine  published  by  the 
Young  Men's  Christian  Association  and  dis- 
tributed gratis.  It  contains  a  record  of  all 
the  athletic  events,  the  educational  activities, 
and  the  amusement  features  of  the  camp,  to- 
gether with  inspirational  articles  and  news 
items  of  national  and  international  signifi- 
cance. If  a  man  goes  to  the  dogs  intellec- 
tually or  to  the  devil  morally  in  Camp  Han- 
cock, he  will  have  to  do  so  deliberately  by 
breaking  violently  out  of  the  environment 
which  has  been  planned  and  developed  for 
his  well-being. 

Religious  work  must  be  left  for  future  dis- 
cussion. As  I  have  confined  my  attention  in 
this  chapter  almost  exclusively  to  Camp  Han- 
cock, it  will  be  sufficient  to  say  that  the  chap- 
lains and  the  Young  Men's  Christian  Associa- 
tion are  working  together  in  the  closest  har- 
mony. Pending  the  completion  of  the 
Knights  of  Columbus  building,  the  facilities 
of  the  Young  Men's  Christian  Association 
were  placed  freely  at  the  disposal  of  the  Cath- 
olic workers.  Bible  classes  have  been  started 
in  many  companies,  and  a  regular  Sunday- 
school,  studying  the  International  Lessons,  is 


74         DEMOCRATIZING  THE  ARMY 

held  Sunday  afternoon  in  the  Young  Men's 
Christian  Association  buildings  or  tents. 
That  religion  is  neither  repressed  nor  crowded 
out  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  a  chaplain  in 
General  Logan's  brigade  baptized  seven  men 
from  his  canteen  one  morning  as  they  made 
public  confession  of  faith  in  Christ. 


IV 

The  Men  Behind  the  Men  Who 
Fight  the  Huns 


IV 


THE  MEN  BEHIND  THE  MEN  WHO 
FIGHT  THE  HUNS 

IT  was  in  1906  that  the  real  international- 
ism of  the  Young  Men's  Christian  As- 
sociation dawned  upon  me.  Before  that 
time  my  experience  with  the  Young  Men's 
Christian  Association  had  not  been  inspiring ; 
the  representatives  I  had  known  were  of  the 
cuddle-close  order,  strong  on  tear-drawing 
prayers  and  suffused  with  a  melodramatic 
emotionalism.  I  admit  that  I  had  been  un- 
fortunate in  the  samples  I  had  met.  I  was 
fishing  for  salmon-trout  in  Lake  Chuzenji, 
in  the  mountains  not  far  from  Nikko,  when  a 
belated  copy  of  the  Japan  Gazette,  published 
in  Tokyo,  fell  under  my  eye.  It  contained 
the  following  letter  from  the  Minister  of  War : 

The  Young  Men's  Christian  Association,  moved  by 
the  desire  to  minister  to  the  welfare  and  comfort  of 
our  officers  and  soldiers  at  the  front,  carried  on  its 
beneficent  work  throughout  the  Russo-Japanese  War 
of  1904-1905.  Beginning  at  Chinampho  early  in 
September,  1904,  it  kept  pace  with  the  northward 
progress  of  the  field  forces  for  nearly  twenty  long 
77 


78         THE  MEN  BEHIND  THE  MEN 

months,  until  March,  1906,  establishing  its  work  at 
eleven  posts  in  Manchuria  and  Korea.  At  large  ex- 
pense of  money  and  labor,  and  by  a  great  variety  of 
means,  it  filled  the  leisure  of  our  officers  and  soldiers, 
far  from  home,  with  wholesome  recreation.  The 
completeness  of  the  equipment  and  the  success  of  the 
enterprise  were  universally  tested  and  recognized  by 
our  troops  in  the  field.  I  am  fully  assured  that  the 
recipients  of  all  this  generous  service  are  filled  with 
deep  and  inexpressible  gratitude. 

Now,  simultaneously  with  the  triumphant  return  of 
our  armies,  as  I  learn  of  the  successful  termination  of 
your  enterprise,  I  take  this  opportunity  to  express  my 
heartfelt  thanks  for  your  noble  services,  and  at  the 
same  time  to  voice  my  appreciation  of  the  generosity 
of  all  those  who  have  either  by  gifts  or  by  personal 
effort  supported  the  work. 

(Signed)  M.  TERAUCHI, 

Minister  of  War. 

Tokyo,  26th  May,  jgth  Meiji  (1906). 
To  YOICHI  HONDA,  ESQ., 

President,  the  Japanese  Young  Men's  Christian  As- 
sociation Union. 

Later  I  talked  it  over  with  Messrs.  Fisher, 
Gleason,  and  Hibbard  at  the  Tokyo  Young 
Men's  Christian  Association,  and  they  gave 
me  the  following  account  of  the  work  done 
for  the  Japanese  soldiers.  Here  is  the  list : 

'.547483  sheets  of  paper  used.  26,168  books  loaned. 

757,159  envelopes.  18,500  used  laundry  at  Feng- 
1,053,381  postcards.  wangcheng. 

101,229  portions  of  Bible  dis-  764  visits  to  hospitals, 

tributed.  613  religious  meetings  held. 


WHO  FIGHT  THE  HUNS  79 

312,033  religious  tracts.  I»752  gramaphone  concerts, 

3,385  Testaments.  lantern  lectures,  and  other 

877,485  men  received  letter  entertainments. 

supplies.  Ip566,379  men  entered  the  dif- 

87,940  men  received  supplies  ferent  branches. 

like  buttons,  thread,  soap,  etc.  At  least  three-fourths  of  the 

152,213  men  used  barber's  out-  entire  army  was  reached  by 

rit.  the  Association. 


That  may  be  considered  the  novitiate  of 
the  Young  Men's  Christian  Association  in 
war  work.  Before  Port  Arthur,  at  Vladivo- 
stok and  on  the  bloody  battle-fields  of 
Manchuria,  the  Association  gathered  the 
experience  which  forms  a  broad  and  well- 
tested  foundation  for  the  phenomenal  work 
now  being  accomplished  in  our  train- 
ing camps  at  home  and  for  our  expe- 
ditionary force  behind  the  fighting  line  in 
France. 

Over  against  the  total  of  supplies  for  the 
entire  Russo-Japanese  War  put  the  list  of  a 
single  shipment — only  one  of  many — for  our 
army  in  France  : 

240  cases  athletic  supplies.  Car-load  condensed  milk. 

4,000,000   noteheads   and   en-  125    talking-machines    with 

velopes.  6,000  records. 

l,ooo     gross    pens    and    pen-  55  tons  of  sugar. 

holders.  5  tons  biscuits. 

27  motor  cars  and  trucks,  in-  75  tons  of  flour. 

eluding  Fords,  Buicks,  Pack-  20  tons  soap. 

ards,  Pierce- Arrows.  2  tons  of  tea. 

500  cots,  mattresses,  and  pil-  5  tons  of  coffee. 

lows.  5  tons  of  cocoa. 

30,000  folding-chairs.  4,000  rolls  rubber  roofing. 


;80         THE  MEN  BEHIND  THE  MEN 

75  motion-picture  machines.  For  soda  fountains — 2  tons 
50  Delco  lighting  plants.  lemonade  powder,  200  gal- 
jo  stereopticons  and  thousands  Ions  syrups. 

of  slides.  300  stoves  for  heating  huts  and 

Over  100  assembly  tents.  dugouts. 

Car-load  of  jams,  jellies,  and  2,000  all-wool  blankets. 

marmalades.  114,000    Bible-reading  calen- 

Car-load    of   "  hot    dogs  "   in  dars. 

pound  cans.  10,000  song  books. 

Several     car-loads     California  30,000   copies   Scripture    por- 

fruit — pears,  apricots,  peach-  tions   of    Psalms,   Proverbs, 

es,  cherries,  etc.  and  Gospel  of  John. 
60  tons  sweet  chocolate  in  five- 
cent  bars. 

But  to  turn  to  our  army  camps  at  home, 
what  kind  of  men  are  working  here?  In 
asking  for  volunteers  this  is  how  the  Young 
Men's  Christian  Association  officially  de- 
scribes the  type  of  men  needed : 

"This  is  no  call  to  ninnies  and  milksops. 
The  Young  Men's  Christian  Association  needs 
real  men,  preferably  men  who  have  had  some 
broad  and  grueling  experience  of  life ;  men 
of  education,  yes ;  but,  above  that,  men  ca- 
pable of  understanding,  sympathy,  and  an 
infinite  deal  of  hard,  exacting  work.  Men 
who  can  turn  a  Ford  inside  out ;  men  who 
can  play  the  piano  and  lead  five  hundred 
others  in  singing;  men  who  are  trained  in 
athletics;  men  six  feet  high  and  three  feet 
wide  and  eighteen  inches  thick;  men  who 
understand  what  Christianity  really  means; 
men  with  humor  and  leadership  who  have 
been  earning  a  hundred  dollars  a  week  and 


WHO  FIGHT  THE  HUNS  81 

are  willing  to  live  on  ten  dollars  a  week.  In 
other  words,  MEN." 

And  in  the  camps,  cantonments,  and  other 
training  stations  the  Association  has  twenty- 
two  hundred  such  men  at  work.  Among 
them  are  some  who  have  given  up  large 
incomes,  others  who  have  resigned  univer- 
sity professorships,  several  college  coaches, 
a  number  of  professional  musicians,  a  sprin- 
kling of  ministers  of  known  ability  in  the 
handling  of  men,  and  the  balance  made  up 
of  the  most  successful  secretaries  from  the 
city  Associations  throughout  the  country.  I 
have  seen  many  of  them  in  action — healthy, 
whole-hearted,  patient,  and  generous  men 
who  sprang  to  their  task  each  morning  be- 
fore daybreak  with  a  "  Hurrah,"  and  went  to 
their  cots  at  night,  dog-tired,  but  with  a  song 
or  a  joke  on  their  lips.  Beside  the  regular 
secretaries  I  found  many  volunteers.  For 
instance,  at  Camp  Dix  there  were  sixty-four 
Young  Men's  Christian  Association  men  at 
work  in  the  Young  Men's  Christian  Associa- 
tion buildings,  but  only  three  were  on  full 
salary,  while  twenty  were  entirely  on  their 
own  charges. 

There  are  more  than  four  hundred  Young 
Men's  Christian  Association  buildings  in  the 
camps,  costing  between  $7,500  and  $9,000 


82         THE  MEN  BEHIND  THE  MEN 

apiece  to  erect.  The  buildings  alone  have 
eaten  up  about  $3,500,000  of  the  $5,000,000 
raised  last  spring.  I  have  seen  more  than 
forty  of  those  buildings,  at  various  hours  of 
the  day  and  in  the  evenings.  They  are 
always  thronged  with  men — writing  home, 
reading,  toasting  their  feet  before  the  open 
fire,  playing  games,  watching  the  free  movies 
or  other  entertainments,  singing  lustily  in  a 
religious  service,  or  listening  eagerly  to  a 
patriotic  speech  or  to  a  sex-hygiene  address 
by  a  medical  authority.  And  here  I  give 
some  of  the  things  I  found  the  Young  Men's 
Christian  Association  secretaries  doing  for 
the  soldiers  :  writing  letters  for  "  illiterates " 
to  their  friends,  straightening  out  business 
difficulties  at  home  for  the  men  who  left  sud- 
denly, having  quiet  chats  with  individuals 
about  sex  matters,  giving  out  Red  Cross 
supplies  where  the  Red  Cross  agent  had  not 
yet  arrived,  supplying  the  place  of  chaplain 
in  regiments  which  had  no  chaplain  or  when 
he  was  away,  directing  the  reading  or  studies 
of  individuals  or  little  groups  of -men  who 
were  working  for  transfer  to  another  branch 
of  the  service,  acting  as  dramatic  director 
and  scene-shifter,  praying  with  men  who  had 
received  news  of  family  bereavement,  arrang- 
ing preliminaries  for  Mass  to  be  celebrated 


WHO  FIGHT  THE  HUNS  83 

by  a  visiting  priest  in  the  Young  Men's 
Christian  Association  hut,  refereeing  a  five- 
round  bout  with  the  mits,  attending  to  bank- 
ing facilities  in  near-by  communities  for  those 
who  needed  them,  reporting  to  anxious  rela- 
tives about  their  boys  in  the  camp  who  did 
not  write  regularly,  teaching  a  man  how  to 
shave,  sending  money  to  a  wife  to  visit  her 
husband  almost  demented  by  homesickness 
— these,  and  a  hundred  other  things,  over 
and  above  all  the  routine  work  of  the  hut. 

"You  see  that  man?"  a  secretary  said, 
pointing  to  a  round-faced,  fair-haired  man 
sitting  in  a  Y  building.  "  I  had  a  pathetic 
but  happy  experience  with  him.  He  is  a 
German.  He  came  to  my  room  a  few  days 
after  reaching  camp,  as  woebegone  a  crea- 
ture as  I  ever  saw.  He  left  Germany  to 
escape  military  service,  because  he  hates 
war  with  an  instinctive  and  reasoned  hatred. 
Then  he  was  drafted.  He  came  to  camp  in 
a  pouring  rain,  and  soon  developed  an  atro- 
cious toothache.  For  two  nights  he  did  not 
sleep.  At  last  he  went  to  the  dentist.  There 
was  a  very  bad  ulcer  at  the  root  of  one  of 
his  lower  teeth.  It  was  lanced,  and  the  poor 
fellow  wandered  in  here  almost  out  of  his 
mind  with  physical  and  mental  pain.  He 
told  me  his  story,  ending  with  a  threat  of 


84         THE  MEN  BEHIND  THE  MEN 

suicide.  Among  other  things,  I  learned  he 
was  a  skilled  automobile  mechanic.  That 
day,  at  headquarters'  mess,  I  repeated  the 
story,  and  before  nightfall  we  had  the  man 
transferred  to  the  Motor  Transport  Service. 
Now  he  is  contented  and  positively  happy  in 
his  new  work.  He  spends  every  hour  of  his 
spare  time  in  this  building." 

A  good  story  is  told  at  the  expense  and  to 
the  credit  of  the  Young  Men's  Christian  As- 
sociation secretaries  in  one  of  the  South 
Carolina  cantonments.  Among  the  drafted 
men  was  a  man  who  seemed  not  to  have 
known  enough  to  claim  exemption  under  the 
dependency  clause.  Not  long  after  reaching 
camp  he  received  a  letter  from  his  wife  tell- 
ing him  that  the  children  were  sick,  there 
was  no  food  in  the  house,  and  the  landlord 
threatened  to  turn  them  out  unless  the  rent 
was  paid.  The  news  drove  him  to  the  verge 
of  melancholia.  Finally  he  wrote  a  letter 
addressed  to  "Almighty  God,  Y.  M.  C.  A." 
In  it  he  told  the  news  he  had  received  from 
home,  how  it  made  him  feel  bad  and  was 
keeping  him  from  being  a  good  soldier,  and 
ended  by  asking  for  fifty  dollars  to  send 
home.  When  the  Young  Men's  Christian 
Association  secretaries  read  the  letter  and 
had  made  some  investigations,  they  made  up 


WHO  FIGHT  THE  HUNS  85 

a  purse  by  personal  contributions,  amounting 
to  thirty  dollars.  They  sent  the  amount, 
three  ten  dollar  bills,  in  a  sealed  envelope  to 
the  man.  He  counted  the  money  carefully — 
one,  two,  three — thirty  dollars.  But  he  had 
asked  for  fifty  1  Nevertheless  he  sat  down 
to  acknowledge  the  providence.  He  told 
God  that  he  had  received  thirty  dollars,  that 
he  would  send  it  to  his  wife  immediately, 
that  it  would  do  much  to  help  the  folks  at 
home,  and  that  he  could  now  do  his  soldier 
work  better.  Then  he  added  :  "  But,  O  God, 
if  you  send  me  any  more  money,  don't  send 
it  through  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  men — those  dirty 
skunks  took  twenty  dollars  out  of  the  last  lot 
for  themselves." 

The  Young  Men's  Christian  Association  is 
not  working  exclusively  in  its  huts  or  tents. 
It  seems  to  be  a  settled  principle  that  the 
safest  and  most  permanent  way  to  reach  the 
men  is  to  organize  each  company  on  a  kind 
of  self-sufficiency  basis.  So,  instead  of  try- 
ing to  centre  the  Bible  teaching  in  the  Y 
building,  the  secretaries  are  starting  a  Bible- 
study  class  or  group  in  each  separate  com- 
pany. They  are  doing  the  same  thing  along 
educational  and  entertainment  lines — devel- 
oping the  talent  within  the  military  unit. 
The  value  of  this  is  obvious :  wherever  that 


86         THE  MEN  BEHIND  THE  MEN 

company  goes — to  another  camp,  on  detail 
duty,  or  to  France — it  will  have  tested  and 
developed  resources  within  itself,  able  to 
carry  on  religious  work,  continue  its  educa- 
tional classes,  and  provide  its  own  entertain- 
ments. Such  a  method  also  aids  the  esprit 
de  corps  of  a  company  and  by  interchange 
of  talent  conduces  to  a  high  morale  in  the 
regiment. 

Mr.  Richard  Hooker,  of  the  Springfield  Re- 
publican, after  a  very  thorough  and  searching 
survey  of  the  Young  Men's  Christian  Associ- 
ation activities  at  Camp  Devens,  Ayer,  Mas- 
sachusetts, said,  "  If,  as  Wellington  averred, 
the  Battle  of  Waterloo  was  won  on  the 
playing  fields  of  Eton,  then  it  may  be  safely 
said  that  this  war  will  be  won  in  the  Young 
Men's  Christian  Association  buildings."  Such 
a  verdict  is  not  surprising.  I  took  with  me 
to  Camp  Devens  Mr.  E.  Harold  Cluett,  one 
of  the  keen  and  vigorous  young  business 
men  of  America,  a  member  of  the  firm  of 
Cluett,  Peabody  &  Co.,  and  educated  at 
Williams  College  and  Oxford.  I  wanted 
his  opinion  from  the  standpoint  of  a  prac- 
tical man  who  knew  organization  on  a  large 
scale.  It  is  no  exaggeration  to  say  that  he 
was  staggered  by  the  vastness  and  thor- 
oughness of  the  work  as  we  went  from  one 


WHO  FIGHT  THE  HUNS  87 

thronged  building,  to  another — fourteen  in  all 
— and  then  closed  the  evening  with  the  last 
act  of  a  vaudeville  in  the  Y  assembly  hall, 
packed  with  more  than  three  thousand  men. 
His  verdict  was  simple  and  direct :  "  This  is 
the  best  example  of  organization  I  have  ever 
seen.  I  would  never  have  believed,  if  I  had 
not  seen  it  with  my  own  eyes,  that  such  tre- 
mendously uplifting  results  could  have  been 
obtained  at  such  a  moderate  cost."  Then  he 
concluded,  deliberately :  "  It  is  a  miracle  in 
manhood-making." 

It  was  in  Camp  Devens  that  I  met  some  of 
the  most  remarkable  instances  of  the  broad 
spirit  of  the  Young  Men's  Christian  Asso- 
ciation. In  one  of  the  huts  we  found  a  group 
of  New  Hampshire  boys  reading  eagerly  from 
New  Testaments  which  had  just  been  pre- 
sented to  them  by  the  Governor  of  the  State, 
while  in  a  room  near  by  the  Hebrew  secre- 
tary was  conducting  a  meeting  for  Jewish 
soldiers,  and  near  the  door  of  which  a  cor- 
poral was  reading  a  Catholic  magazine.  One 
day  the  wife  of  one  of  the  soldiers  persuaded 
her  husband  that  he  should  join  the  church, 
but  she  was  anxious  that  it  should  be  the 
Presbyterian  Church.  It  happened  that  one 
of  the  Young  Men's  Christian  Association 
secretaries  was  a  Presbyterian  minister,  and 


88        THE  MEN  BEHIND  THE  MEN 

he  was  brought  from  the  distant  building  to 
which  he  was  attached.  But,  alas!  he  had 
no  Session.  Now,  how  could  a  man  be  re- 
ceived into  the  Presbyterian  Church  without 
"  coming  before  the  Session  "  ?  The  min- 
ister, however,  was  not  to  be  balked  by  a 
mere  ecclesiastical  canon  of  a  few  hundred 
years'  standing.  He  found  an  officer  of  a 
Methodist  Church,  a  Baptist  deacon,  a  Con- 
gregational deacon,  and  an  Episcopal  vestry- 
man, and  these  he  improvised  into  a  Session. 
The  candidate  was  duly  examined  as  to  his 
faith  and  experience,  and  there  and  then  en- 
rolled as  a  member  of  the  Presbyterian  church 
of  Dobb's  Ferry,  New  York — two  hundred 
and  fifty  miles  away.  One  of  the  best  work- 
ers of  the  Young  Men's  Christian  Association 
staff  in  Camp  Devens  is  a  Unitarian  minister, 
but  not  even  the  most  rigid  sectarian,  with  a 
long-range  scent  for  heresy,  could  question 
his  personal  devotion  or  discount  the  value 
of  the  service  he  is  rendering.  These  men 
adapt  themselves  to  every  conceivable  vicis- 
situde of  the  soldier's  life.  Part  of  the  mili- 
tary training  is  in  trenches — real  trenches, 
replicas  of  those  on  the  Aisne  front  and  built 
under  French  instructors.  Platoons  will  stay 
in  those  trenches  for  seventy-two  hours  at  a 
stretch,  eating  and  sleeping  there,  in  the  rain 


FIGHT  THE  HUNS  89 

and  snow  and  frost.  So  the  Young  Men's 
Christian  Association  is  doing  what  it  does 
on  the  British  front — excavating  a  Young 
Men's  Christian  Association  dugout  twenty- 
five  feet  underground,  with  a  fireplace  in  it ; 
and  a  secretary  will  always  be  there  to  min- 
ister to  the  boys  when  they  are  doing  their 
bit  in  the  trenches.  When  the  Y  follows  the 
men  right  to  the  firing  line,  shares  the 
dangers  and  hardships  of  the  fighters,  pro- 
vides comfort  and  cheer  at  any  cost,  no 
wonder  the  rank  and  file  come  to  regard  it 
with  reverence  and  affection.  The  letter  Y 
is  carved  deep  in  the  hearts  of  millions  of 
men  the  world  over. 

Finally,  it  may  be  said  about  the  Young 
Men's  Christian  Association  that  it  is  cooper- 
ating in  a  splendid  way  with  every  other 
agency  that  is  at  work  for  the  betterment  of 
the  personnel  of  the  army.  The  chaplains  of 
every  shade  of  faith  or  form  of  polity  are 
given  the  free  use  of  its  buildings.  Indeed, 
it  may  be  said  that  the  Young  Men's  Chris- 
tian Association  is  the  clearing-house  of  the 
camp,  the  rendezvous  of  all  the  diverse  ele- 
ments of  the  army,  the  living,  sympathetic 
link  between  the  rigid  military  regime  and 
the  dear,  old  free  life  of  civilian  days.  If  the 
Young  Men's  Christian  Association  were  ever 


90         THE  MEN  BEHIND  THE  MEN 

enswathed  in  sectarianism  and  coffined  in 
dogma,  the  organization  has  certainly  had  a 
glorious  resurrection.  It  stands  to-day  a  live 
man's  organization  for  living  men — virile, 
versatile,  flexible,  resolute.  Whatever  is 
worth  while  doing  for  men — physical,  men- 
tal, social,  moral,  or  spiritual — the  Young 
Men's  Christian  Association  is  ready  to  do  it, 
overcoming  apparently  insurmountable  ob- 
stacles, smashing  its  determined  way  through 
hoary  customs  and  stupid  prejudices  without 
hesitation,  and  seizing  every  opening  for  hu- 
man and  humanizing  service  with  the  celerity 
and  confidence  of  the  highest  opportunism. 
I  have  seen  these  things  done  and  have 
marvelled.  The  War  Department,  the  com- 
manding officers,  and  the  enlisted  men  have 
found  this  out,  and  whenever  there  is  a  gap 
to  be  filled,  a  chasm  to  be  bridged,  or  a 
morass  to  be  crossed  the  man  who  faces  the 
difficulty  turns  instinctively  to  the  Young 
Men's  Christian  Association  for  assistance. 

The  Knights  of  Columbus  are  working  in 
the  camps  and  cantonments,  not  as  a  secret 
society,  but  on  precisely  the  same  basis  as  the 
Young  Men's  Christian  Association.  Every 
one  I  met  connected  with  the  Knights  of 
Columbus  frankly  acknowledged  his  in- 
debtedness to  the  Young  Men's  Christian 


WHO  FIGHT  THE  HUNS  91 

Association  and  wished  to  copy  every  help- 
ful feature  of  the  more  experienced  society. 
Mr.  Cusick,  of  Camp  Gordon,  allowed  me  to 
see  the  instructions  sent  to  each  Knights  of 
Columbus  secretary.  They  are  broad,  gen- 
erous, and  strictly  humanitarian.  Here  are 
some  sample  sentences :  "  Arrange  for  an 
address  by  some  prominent  non-Catholic 
man  in  the  community."  "  Extend  an  invi- 
tation to  every  man  in  camp  to  make  use  of 
our  buildings  at  all  times,  and  make  it  plain 
that  they  may  call  on  the  secretary  for  any 
assistance  they  may  wish."  "  Innocent  games 
are  to  be  encouraged  and  permitted,  but 
gambling  of  all  kinds  must  be  rigidly  ex- 
cluded from  our  buildings."  "  Cooperate  in 
a  friendly  way  with  the  Young  Men's  Chris- 
tian Association,  make  it  a  point  to  treat  the 
inquiries  of  non-Catholics  with  the  greatest 
respect."  "  Put  a  sign  reading,  '  Write  often 
to  Mother '  above  the  writing-tables."  "  If 
there  is  ever  a  time  that  a  man  needs  his  re- 
ligion, it  is  during  the  uncertain  time  of  war, 
and  the  men  may  be  inclined  to  forget  this 
unless  they  are  told  now  and  again."  "  Your 
building  is  not  to  be  a  church  except  at  such 
times  as  religious  services  are  being  con- 
ducted there,  but  it  is  a  place  in  charge  of 
Catholic  gentlemen  and  for  the  benefit  of  all 


92        THE  MEN  BEHIND  THE  MEN 

men  who  will  conduct  themselves  as  gentle 
men.     Any  violations  of  the  principles  of  de- 
cency are  not  only  to  be  frowned  upon,  but 
absolutely  forbidden." 

With  the  exception  that  Mass  is  held  in  the 
Knights  of  Columbus  buildings,  I  could  see 
no  essential  difference  between  them  and  the 
Young  Men's  Christian  Association  huts. 
Each  has  ample  writing  facilities,  libraries, 
magazines,  phonographs,  moving-picture  ap- 
paratus, and  games,  and  alike  they  give  the 
same  cordial  welcome  to  and  place  their 
equipment  freely  at  the  disposal  of  all  the 
men  in  camp  without  regard  to  race,  creed, 
or  caste.  I  talked  over  the  possibilities  of 
the  work  with  the  Rev.  J.  A.  Horton,  Princi- 
pal of  Marist  College,  Atlanta,  Georgia,  and  a 
Knights  of  Columbus  chaplain.  He  was  ex- 
tremely broad  in  his  conception  of  the  work  to 
be  done,  and  it  never  entered  into  his  thought, 
even  remotely,  that  the  opportunity  for  hu- 
man service  would  be  warped  by  sectarian 
bias.  Father  Walsh,  a  Knights  of  Columbus 
chaplain  at  Camp  Dix,  was  eager  to  tell  me 
everything  about  his  building  and  its  work. 
He  was  gleeful  over  the  way  in  which  the 
men  made  use  of  its  facilities,  how  they  ap- 
preciated the  pool  table,  the  entertainments, 
and  the  lectures.  He  told  with  enthusiasm 


WHO  FIGHT  THE  HUNS  93 

of  how  he  was  cooperating  with  the  military 
authorities  in  encouraging  boxing  because 
the  exercise  aided  the  bayonet  drills.  He 
said  they  entertained  never  less  than  twelve 
hundred  men  a  day.  They  had  Masses  every 
morning  and  twice  on  Sunday,  but  made  no 
effort  to  influence  non-Catholics  to  attend 
the  strictly  religious  services.  Father  Walsh 
was  on  the  ground  all  through  the  period  of 
camp  construction,  and  as  an  appreciation  of 
his  faithfulness  an  automobile  was  presented 
to  him  by  the  civilian  plumbers  for  use  in  his 
work. 

The  Hebrew  Association  has  no  buildings 
of  its  own,  but  uses  the  Young  Men's  Chris- 
tian Association  huts  for  any  specific  work  it 
wishes  to  pursue.  It  has  a  paid  secretary  in 
every  camp — a  bright,  well-educated,  and 
earnest  young  man  who  takes  particular  care 
of  the  Jewish  soldiers.  The  most  important 
phase  of  the  Hebrew  Association  work  is  the 
manner  in  which  it  affiliates  its  soldiers  with 
the  Hebrew  families  and  synagogues  in  the 
communities  adjacent  to  the  camps.  All  of 
these  men  and  institutions  cooperate  in  the 
heartiest  manner  conceivable  with  the  direct- 
ors of  physical  training,  recreation,  and  music 
within  the  camps  appointed  by  the  Fosdick 
Commission,  with  the  playground  representa- 


94         THE  MEN  BEHIND  THE  MEN, 

tives  and  the  civil  authorities  in  the  surround- 
ing communities,  with  the  regimental  chap- 
lains, and  with  the  regular  military  authorities. 
As  the  result  of  visits  to  several  camps  and 
cantonments  I  got  the  impression  that  there 
was  a  veritable  conspiracy  of  positively  good 
forces,  a  kind  of  confederacy  of  sanely  moral 
agencies,  to  present  to  the  world,  not  only  a 
victorious  fighting  machine,  but  to  create  an 
order  of  healthy,  clean,  intelligent,  and  full- 
orbed  moral  manhood  such  as  this  country 
would  never  have  had  if  the  degeneracy  of 
Germany  had  not  forced  us  into  the  war. 


Making  Democracy  Safe  for  the 
Soldier 


V 

MAKING  DEMOCRACY  SAFE  FOR 
THE  SOLDIER 

THE  War-Camp  Community  Service 
in  Atlanta,  described  in  this  chapter, 
gives  a  good  idea  of  what  is  being 
done  in  all  the  camp  cities. 

An  unexpected  rain-storm  drove  me  into  a 
corner  fruit  store  for  shelter.  A  man  in 
khaki  was  shaking  the  water  from  his  uni- 
form very  much  as  a  dog  shakes  itself  after 
a  plunge.  In  less  than  a  minute  a  package 
of  cigarettes  put  us  on  a  friendly  footing. 

"Yah,"  he  said,  "the  people  of  Atlanta 
treat  us  white — gosh,  but  I  was  lonesome  the 
first  week  in  camp — first  time  I'd  ever  been 
away  from  home  over  night — never  been  in 
a  town  as  big  as  this  before — never  thought 
that  women  could  be  as  nice  to  men  they 
didn't  know — never  heard  so  much  music  in 
all  my  life — nobody  tries  to  stick  us — don't 
give  a  damn  for  the  soldiering  part  in  camp, 
but  the  other  things  that  go  with  it  are  O.  K. 
— hope  I  don't  go  to  France,  hope  the  war 
will  be  over  before  we  get  ready,  then  I 
97 


98          MAKING  DEMOCRACY  SAFE 

figure  I'll  come  and  live  in  Atlanta — they're 
some  fine  people  here,  sure.'1 

A  man's  environment  is  anything  that  en- 
grosses his  mind  or  engages  his  affections. 
The  populated  areas  around  our  forty  or  fifty 
camps,  cantonments,  and  training  stations 
are  the  physical  environment  of  more  than  a 
million  of  our  picked  young  men  ;  the  men 
and  the  women  with  whom  they  come  into 
contact  within  that  area  are  the  actual  and 
vital  environment  Ideas  and  ideals  are  the 
ultimate  realities,  the  forces  that  make  char- 
acter and  guide  conduct.  In  handling  the 
high-mettled  men  of  a  democracy  it  is  not 
possible  to  corral  them  in  a  camp  after  the 
fashion  of  an  autocracy  and  beat  them  into 
military  shape.  They  would  not  surrender 
the  privileges  of  democracy  at  home  to  fight 
for  democracy  abroad.  The  men  of  our  new 
armies  have  the  freedom  of  the  towns  and 
cities  close  to  their  camps,  and  the  influence 
of  those  communities  upon  the  men  is  by  no 
means  the  least  concern  of  the  War  Depart- 
ment. The  Commission  on  Training  Camp 
Activities,  Mr.  Raymond  B.  Fosdick,  Chair- 
man, has  asked  the  Playground  and  Recre- 
ation Association  of  America  so  to  organize 
the  social  life  of  the  communities  that  it  will 
mean  a  healthy  reaction  upon  the  camps. 


FOB  THE  SOLDIER  99 

To  discover  what  had  been  done  and  what 
could  be  done  I  went  to  Atlanta,  Georgia. 
Camp  Gordon  is  fourteen  miles  distant  from 
the  city,  Fort  McPherson  four  miles,  and  the 
Aviation  School  is  upon  the  campus  of  the 
Georgia  Institute  of  Technology,  within  the 
city  limits.  Atlanta  is  a  proud  city  and  con- 
templates itself  with  a  marked  degree  of  sat- 
isfaction. Has  it  not  done  several  big  things 
in  a  big  way  within  recent  years?  When 
has  Atlanta  failed  to  see  and  to  seize  an 
opportunity?  The  questions  are  answered 
fluently  and  frankly  in  the  literature  of  the 
Chamber  of  Commerce  and  in  the  confident 
speech  and  bearing  of  the  citizens.  But  I 
was  in  a  skeptical  mood  ;  perhaps  the  proc- 
lamation of  Mayor  Asa  G.  Candler  prej- 
udiced me : 

"  Atlanta  sought  and  secured  the  establishment  here 
of  one  of  the  army  cantonments,  into  which  will  be 
entered  for  military  training  thousands  of  American 
young  men  coming  from  every  section  of  the  country 
and  from  every  walk  of  life.  With  them  it  is  reason- 
able to  suppose  that  almost  an  equal  number  of  peo- 
ple will  come  and  temporarily  be  citizens  of  Atlanta. 
.  .  .  When  we  asked  for  these  army  camps,  we 
did  it  for  two  reasons  : 

"First,  that  we  might  contribute  as  a  community 
toward  furnishing  to  the  country  men  properly  pre- 


100        MAKING  DEMOCEACY  SAFE 

pared   to  represent  us  on  the  great  battle-fields  of 
Europe  to  which  they  are  going  to  be  sent. 

"  Second,  that  in  doing  so  we  might  also  benefit  in 
every  possible  way  Atlanta  and  her  people." 

Undoubtedly  in  the  majority  of  minds  the 
second  consideration  was  paramount.  Other 
communities  were  moved  by  a  similar  mo- 
tive. Wherever  a  camp  was  established  the 
residents  of  the  adjacent  communities  began 
to  estimate  their  profits  and  to  plan  how  it 
"  might  benefit  in  every  possible  way  Atlanta 
and  her  people."  Then,  behold !  Every- 
thing inverted,  the  foreseen  order  topsyturvy, 
the  grasping  fist  changed  to  the  open  hand 
of  giving.  What  did  it?  Not  a  fiat  from 
the  War  Department,  for  moral  resolutions 
do  not  come  by  ukase.  When  tens  of  thou- 
sands of  homesick  boys,  torn  from  their  fa- 
miliar setting,  with  eyes  eager  to  serve  their 
country  in  spite  of  heavy  hearts,  began  to 
pour  into  the  camp  and  overflow  into  the 
streets  of  the  city,  every  decent  American 
citizen  subordinated  personal  profit  to  the  in- 
stincts of  brotherhood  and  began  to  ask, 
11  What  can  we  do  for  these  fellows  ?  "  At- 
lanta set  itself  to  answer  that  question  with  a 
combination  of  intelligence  and  enthusiasm 
almost  beyond  praise.  Under  the  best  lead- 
ership the  city  could  furnish,  Atlanta  mobil- 


FOR  THE  SOLDIEE  101 

ized  and  organized  its  resources  for  the  bene- 
fit of  the  soldiers. 

Everything  is  organized  under  a  Commis- 
sion consisting  of  twelve  representative  citi- 
zens, five  of  whom  are  ex-Presidents  of  the 
Chamber  of  Commerce  and  one  the  present 
acting  President.  The  ex  officio  members 
are  the  Mayor,  the  Major-General  command- 
ing the  Eighty-second  Division  at  Camp 
Gordon,  the  colonel  in  charge  of  the  field 
base  hospital  at  Fort  McPherson,  the  District 
Attorney,  the  United  States  Internal  Revenue 
Collector,  and  the  president  of  the  Atlanta 
Chapter  of  the  Red  Cross.  Presiding  over 
the  Commission  is  Mr.  V.  H.  Kriegshaber, 
one  of  the  most  vigorous  and  successful  of 
Atlanta's  business  men. 

"What  is  your  Commission  doing?"  I 
asked  Mr.  Kriegshaber,  as  we  sat  in  his  office. 

His  answer  was  in  measured  sentences,  but 
suffused  with  enthusiasm : 

"  We  are  organizing  and  using  all  the 
helpful  and  recreational  resources  of  our  city 
for  the  welfare  and  benefit  of  the  soldiers  at 
Camp  Gordon  and  Fort  McPherson  ;  we  are 
creating  normal  relations  between  the  sol- 
diers and  the  community  by  establishing 
social  intercourse  and  surrounding  them  with 
a  safe  environment ;  we  are  trying  to  help 


102        MAKING  DEMOCBACY  SAFE 

Uncle  Sam  make  the  soldiers  into  the  most 
efficient  military  unit  the  world  has  ever 
seen." 

"  How  are  you  doing  it  ?  " 

"If  you  will  come  with  me  to  the  meeting 
of  the  Executive  Committee,  you  will  see  and 
hear." 

The  members  of  the  Committee,  which 
meets  every  Thursday  at  1 1  A.  M.,  discussed 
policies  and  problems  in  the  light  of  the  past 
week's  experience,  created  new  sub-commit- 
tees for  special  purposes  or  filled  vacancies 
in  existing  ones,  considered  ways  and  means 
of  putting  into  effect  suggestions  from  the 
National  Committee  on  Training  Camp  Ac- 
tivities, and  then  formally  adopted  the  fol- 
lowing monthly  budget  after  its  approval  by 
the  Safety  Committee : 

Expenses  of  Atlanta  Commission,  including  secretary, 
stenographer,  other  office  help,  stationery,  rent, 

postage,  etc $450 

Travelling  and  transportation  expenses  of  employees 

to  camp,  etc 200 

Expenses  of  free  Sunday  movies,  with  organ  and  other 
concerts  at  Auditorium,  cooperating  with  Atlanta 

Festival  Association 500 

Expenses  in  connection  with  colored  soldiers'  recreation 

and  rest  rooms 500 

Balance  needed  by  Y.  M.  C.  A 500 

Travellers'  Aid  Society 200 

National  League  of  Women's  Service 250 

Anti-Tuberculosis  Association 650 

Total  per  month 13,250 


FOE  THE  SOLDIER  103 

This  amount  is  subscribed  by  Atlanta  citi- 
zens for  the  duration  of  the  war. 

At  twelve  o'clock  we  adjourned  to  another 
room  for  luncheon  and  for  a  round  table  con- 
ference with  the  committee  chairmen  of  the 
city  and  representatives  of  the  various 
branches  of  non-military  activities  within  the 
camp.  Each  in  turn  made  a  report,  men 
from  the  camp  telling  what  was  needed 
during  the  coming  week  and  the  city  workers 
stating  what  material  was  available  for  those 
needs.  In  many  ways  it  was  the  most  re- 
markable meeting  I  ever  attended,  marked 
by  a  unique  spirit  of  cooperation.  Mrs.  B.  M. 
Boy  kin  reported  for  the  Federated  Women's 
Clubs  of  Atlanta — several  in  number — sketch- 
ing briefly  the  salient  features  of  their  work. 
For  example :  the  women  of  the  city  were 
going  out  to  Camp  Gordon  in  the  afternoons 
to  mend  the  men's  clothing  and  to  teach 
them  how  to  do  their  own  sewing ;  the 
Daughters  of  the  American  Revolution  had 
organized  to  teach  the  colored  women  to  knit 
for  their  own  soldiers  ;  the  School  of  Oratory 
had  organized  a  glee  and  mandolin  club  ; 
Mrs.  E.  S.  Jackson  promised  a  huge  Christ- 
mas pageant  to  be  given  both  in  the  city  and 
the  camp,  etc. 

The  Transportation   Committee  reported 


104        MAKING  DEMOCEACY  SAFE 

the  number  of  automobiles  lent  by  citizens  to 
take  convalescent  soldiers  for  a  ride  in  the 
afternoons  and  to  carry  volunteer  entertainers 
back  and  forth  to  the  camps.  The  Entertain- 
ment Committee  told  of  so  many  concerts, 
shows,  readings,  impersonations,  etc.,  that  I 
could  not  tabulate  them  ;  a  representative  of 
the  local  Drama  League  said  that  the  needs  of 
the  camp  had  revived  his  society,  and  they 
had  a  repertoire  of  plays  which  would  last 
all  winter ;  the  secretary  of  the  Hebrew 
Association  in  the  camp  described  how  the 
people  of  Jewish  faith  in  Atlanta  had  brought 
about  a  hundred  Hebrew  soldiers  in  to  a 
dance  where  they  met  young  ladies  of  their 
own  race,  and  how  it  had  been  arranged  that 
Hebrew  soldiers  should  have  furlough  on 
their  sacred  days  and  come  into  the  city  to 
live  with  Jewish  families  and  celebrate  their 
religious  rites.  He  spoke  generously  of  the 
splendid  manner  in  which  the  Young  Men's 
Christian  Association  placed  all  the  facilities 
of  its  buildings  at  his  disposal.  At  that  point 
the  secretary  of  the  Knights  of  Columbus 
sprang  to  his  feet  and  added  his  testimony  to 
the  fine  spirit  of  the  Young  Men's  Christian 
Association,  for,  pending  the  completion  of 
his  building,  he  had  the  free  use  of  all  or  any 
of  the  Young  Men's  Christian  Association 


FOE  THE  SOLDIEE  105 

buildings  for  his  Knights  of  Columbus  activ- 
ities among  the  Catholic  soldiers. 

Although  I  was  only  a  guest,  I  was  so 
moved  by  this  evidence  of  religious  comity 
that  I  asked  permission  to  tell  an  incident 
which  came  to  my  notice  in  an  English 
paper.  At  the  battle  of  Messines  Ridge  a 
Catholic  soldier  lay  dying,  blown  almost  to 
pieces  by  a  bomb.  No  Catholic  chaplain 
happened  to  be  near,  and  no  Protestant 
chaplain  was  available  ;  but  a  Hebrew  rabbi, 
acting  as  chaplain  to  the  Jewish  troops,  bent 
over  the  dying  Catholic  and  held  the  crucifix 
to  his  lips  while  he  breathed  his  last.  For  a 
moment  the  story  was  received  with  reverent 
silence,  and  then  every  one  in  the  room 
broke  into  applause.  Some  of  the  by-prod- 
ucts of  this  war  may  be  worth  all  the  sacrifices 
of  men,  money,  and  strength  we  are  making 
so  freely. 

Another  illustration  of  the,  above  remark 
may  be  found  in  what  the  next  speaker — the 
camp  educational  director — said.  Among 
drafted  men  in  Camp  Gordon  were  large 
numbers  of  sturdy  Southern  mountaineers, 
English-speaking  but  illiterate.  In  some 
companies  the  number  ran  as  high  as  fifteen 
per  cent.  These  were  being  taught  to  read 
and  write,  and  rapid  progress  was  reported. 


106        MAKING  DEMOCRACY  SAFE 

But  a  few  of  these  men  were  found  who  did 
not  know  why  we  were  at  war  or  the  nation 
against  which  we  were  fighting.  Neither 
did  they  seem  to  care ;  Uncle  Sam  wanted 
them  to  fight,  and  they  didn't  mind  much 
who  it  was — English,  French,  Germans,  or 
Russians.  Uncle  Sam  wanted  them,  and 
that  was  enough.  A  few  months  of  camp 
life  will  send  those  men  back  to  their  moun- 
tain homes  with  a  vision  of  possibilities 
which  will  change  the  character  of  all  suc- 
ceeding generations.  Besides  the  English 
work  the  director  mentioned  that  seventy- five 
volunteer  teachers  were  going  out  from  the 
city  regularly  to  conduct  classes  in  French. 

The  Camp  Director  of  Singing  thanked 
the  Committee  for  the  book  of  songs  which 
had  been  distributed  gratuitously  to  each 
soldier,  the  cost  of  publishing  the  book  hav- 
ing been  met  by  paid  advertisements.  Al- 
though the  librarian  had  nothing  to  tell  of 
the  American  Library  Association,  he  ac- 
knowledged the  receipt  of  ample  quantities 
of  good  books  and  recent  magazines.  The 
Library  Association  has  met  the  immediate 
demand  for  reading  by  an  arrangement  with 
the  Atlanta  laundries.  The  following  notice 
sent  to  every  home  in  the  city  tells  its  own 
story : 


FOB  THE  SOLDIER  107 

TO   THE   ATLANTA   PUBLIC 

The  Laundry  men's  Association  have  very  kindly 
tendered  the  free  use  of  their  delivery  wagons  to 
collect  any  magazines  and  books  that  you  may  care  to 
give  to  the  Carnegie  Library  for  use  of  our  Soldier 
Boys  at  Camp  Gordon  and  Fort  McPherson.  Every 
home  has  some  books  or  magazines  that  can  be  spared 
for  this  patriotic  purpose.  Please  "do  your  bit "  and 
hand  these  to  your  laundryman.  The  Carnegie  Li- 
brary will  see  that  they  are  properly  delivered  to  the 
Soldiers. 

ATLANTA  COMMISSION  ON  TRAINING  CAMP 
ACTIVITIES. 

Atlanta  has  an  auditorium  which  will  seat 
sixty-five  hundred,  and  which  contains  one 
of  the  best  organs  in  the  world.  Every  Sun- 
day a  "  continuous  performance "  is  given 
for  the  soldiers  from  2  : 30  till  10  P.  M.  It  is 
absolutely  free,  and  consists  of  organ  recitals, 
movies,  popular  singing,  and  entertaining 
features  of  various  kinds — but  all  refined  and 
elevating. 

The  Young  Men's  Christian  Association 
secretary  reported  the  multiform  work  being 
carried  on,  not  only  in  the  buildings,  but  in 
the  companies,  and  testified  to  the  splendid 
encouragement  given  by  all  the  officers,  from 
the  general  in  command  to  the  most  recent 
reserve  subaltern.  He  also  commended  the 
churches  heartily  for  their  cooperation  in  all 


108        MAKING  DEMOCEACY  SAFE 

good  work  for  the  soldiers.  Mr.  Kriegshaber 
assured  us  that  the  local  city  authorities  and 
police  were  working  with  the  Federal  au- 
thorities and  the  representatives  of  Mr. 
Fosdick's  Committee  for  the  control,  and, 
finally,  for  the  suppression  of  vice  in  and 
around  the  city.  As  such  measures  have  to 
be  taken  with  discretion  and  secrecy,  he 
could  not  go  into  the  subject  exhaustively. 
But  he  told  how  the  Travellers'  Aid  Society, 
through  its  representatives  at  the  railway 
stations  and  on  the  streets,  and  the  Young 
Women's  Christian  Association,  by  means  of 
hostess  houses  and  the  formation  of  clubs  and 
guilds  among  the  girls  and  young  women  of 
the  city,  were  making  a  marked  contribution 
toward  the  solution  of  the  problem  by  positive 
and  educational  methods. 

The  men  in  uniform,  as  I  saw  them  on  the 
streets  and  in  public  places,  were  orderly  and 
of  exceptionally  good  behavior.  I  walked 
about  the  city  for  more  than  two  hours  after 
nightfall,  and,  although  khaki  was  in  evidence 
everywhere,  I  never  saw  or  heard  a  semblance 
of  rowdyism.  I  believe  the  soldier  will  almost 
invariably  meet  the  community  in  the  spirit 
in  which  the  community  meets  him.  I  was 
assured  by  the  ladies  present  that  not  a  single 
instance  had  been  reported  of  a  rude  act  or 


FOR  THE  SOLDIER  109 

word  by  a  soldier  toward  the  ladies  and  girls 
who  have  been  interesting  themselves  in  the 
camp. 

The  story  of  Atlanta's  relationship  to  the 
new  army,  how  the  city  is  meeting  its  obliga- 
tion, more  intent  upon  serving  than  upon 
the  gains  of  commerce,  is  merely  etched.  I 
do  not  know  whether  any  community  near  a 
camp  or  cantonment  is  doing  more  or  better 
work  than  Atlanta,  but  what  I  saw  made  me 
proud  of  the  men  and  women  who  are  ex- 
emplifying democracy  at  its  best. 

Augusta,  near  Camp  Hancock,  and  Spar- 
tanburg,  near  Camp  Wadsworth,  are  perhaps 
doing  all  that  the  facilities  of  smaller  com- 
munities can  offer.  Baltimore  and  Washing- 
ton, near  Camp  Meade,  and  Philadelphia, 
which  is  easily  accessible  from  Camp  Dix, 
have  more  serious  problems,  caused  partly 
by  the  largeness  of  the  cities  and  partly  by 
the  difficulties  of  handling  the  liquor  situa- 
tion. Perhaps  the  efforts  being  made  by 
the  representatives  of  the  Playground  and 
Recreation  Association  in  smaller  places  near 
Camp  Dix — New  Egypt,  Bordentown,  Mount 
Holly,  and  Wrightstown — will  soon  over- 
come the  temptations  of  Trenton  and  Phila- 
delphia by  providing  sufficient  entertainment 
for  the  men  on  the  very  confines  of  the 


110       MAKING  DEMOCEACY  SAFE 

cantonment.  At  any  rate,  the  positive  in- 
fluence of  the  Playground  and  Recreation 
Association  will  make  a  wholesome  environ- 
ment near  at  hand  if  the  men  will  avail  them- 
selves of  it ;  and  this,  linked  to  the  vigorous 
activities  of  the  Training  Camp  Commission 
within  the  cantonment,  will  lift  thousands  of 
men  much  higher  in  the  scale  of  a  healthy 
mental,  moral,  and  physical  manhood.  The 
opportunities  of  such  work  are  so  great  and 
its  satisfactions  so  splendid  that  the  various 
organizations  of  a  social  or  humanitarian  or 
religious  kind  are  amply  justified  in  with- 
drawing their  best  and  wisest  workers  from 
the  normal  communities  and  concentrating 
them  in  and  around  the  training  camps. 

While  the  men  fight  to  make  the  world 
safe  for  democracy,  we  must  fight  to  make 
democracy  safe  for  the  men. 


VI 
Will  America  Fail? 


VI 
WILL  AMERICA  FAIL? 

WRITING  from  one  of  the  canton- 
ments, a  soldier  said  :  "  I  wish  the 
people  at  home  could  get  their 
minds  on  this  war  business  as  we  have  ours 
fixed  on  it  here."  Evidently  there  is  too 
much  complaint  reaching  the  camps;  the 
folks  back  home  are  dwelling  unduly  upon 
the  little  deprivations  and  dislocations  caused 
by  the  absence  of  their  loved  ones ;  perhaps, 
with  a  false  psychology,  they  are  exaggerat- 
ing the  hardships  caused  by  high  prices  and 
limited  commodities  to  let  the  soldiers  know 
that  they  too  are  sacrificing.  Democracy  is 
a  highly  sensitive  organism,  and  what  is  felt 
in  one  part  is  quickly  experienced  through 
the  whole  body.  The  drill  master  can  make 
a  man  into  an  automaton  of  autocracy  but 
something  more  is  needed  to  make  a  cham- 
pion of  democracy.  Our  soldiers  now  in 
training  will  be  just  what  the  people  of 
America  expect  them  to  be,  will  them  to  be. 
They  feed  their  individual  souls  on  the  aspir- 
"3 


114  WILL  AMERICA  FAILt 

ations  and  inspirations  and  determinations 
of  the  national  soul.  That  larger  life,  upon 
which  their  separate  lives  depend  for  exist- 
ence, comes  to  them  in  letters  through  the 
mail,  in  daily  papers  and  weekly  or  monthly 
magazines.  And,  being  something  spiritual, 
it  also  finds  its  way  into  the  camps  along 
channels  no  one  can  trace.  They  respond 
to  it  and  embody  it,  yet  all  the  while  not 
knowing  what  is  molding  them.  The  mind 
of  the  nation  reaches  the  men  through  the 
military  command,  the  War  Department,  the 
munition  factories;  the  soul  of  the  nation 
reaches  the  men  through  continued  contact 
with  the  old  civil  life.  Efficiency  in  the  army 
reflects  the  mental  vigor  of  America  but  the 
morale  of  the  army  will  reflect  the  spiritual 
quality  of  America. 

The  front  line  of  battle  in  this  struggle  is 
somewhere  in  France,  Flanders  and  Italy; 
the  field  of  war  stretches  back  into  every 
home,  workshop,  lodge  room,  club  house  and 
church  in  America.  Liberty  Loans  are  im- 
portant because  they  furnish  the  government 
with  money ;  Young  Men's  Christian  Asso- 
ciation and  Knights  of  Columbus  and  Com- 
munity Recreation  campaigns  are  necessary 
because  they  guarantee  a  normal  environ- 
ment for  the  troops  during  an  abnormal 


WILL  AMEEICA  FAIL!  115 

experience ;  Red  Cross  drives  are  indispen- 
sable because  they  bring  the  Angel  of  Mercy 
into  the  hell  of  conflict;  but  these  laudable 
enterprises  have  a  value  even  beyond  those 
described — they  proclaim  to  a  million  and  a 
half  men  in  uniform  that  they  have  the  confi- 
dence and  backing  and  affection  of  the  people 
who  remain  at  home.  When  they  know  that 
the  busy  and  influential  men  and  women  in 
the  old  home  village  or  city  are  giving  freely 
of  their  time  and  strength  and  wealth  on  their 
behalf,  and  that  the  obscure  and  the  poor  also 
are  contributing  proportionately  to  the  same 
cause,  there  comes  an  accession  of  pride  and 
courage  to  the  men  in  the  training  camps 
and  trenches  and  out  upon  the  high  seas. 
Not  enough  of  our  civilian  population  realize 
the  significance  of  this. 

There  is  a  sense  in  which  this  war  has  not 
yet  gripped  the  generality  of  people.  In  al- 
most every  community  there  is  a  shamefully 
large  proportion  of  men  and  women  whose 
thoughts  and  habits  have  remained  un- 
changed ;  the  world  cataclysm  has  made  no 
difference  to  their  self-absorbing  method  of 
living.  And  they  seem  to  intend  that  it  shall 
make  no  difference.  This  has  been  partly 
due  to  the  failure  of  the  press  and  the  pulpit 
to  understand  that  vicariousness  can  be  upon 


116  WILL  AMERICA  FAIL? 

an  international  scale.  During  the  past  three 
years  our  provincial  minds  have  thought  of 
the  Belgians  as  fighting  for  Belgium,  the 
French  for  France,  the  British  for  Britain  and 
the  Italians  for  Italy.  Slowly,  very  slowly, 
it  is  breaking  in  upon  our  reluctant  minds 
that  every  man  who  has  been  blinded  or 
broken  or  killed  in  Europe  has  suffered  for 
us.  If  every  American  would  ask  his  con- 
science: "When  the  war  has  made  such  a 
tragic  difference  to  Belgium,  France,  Britain, 
Serbia,  Roumania  and  Italy,  while  they  were 
standing  between  barbarity  and  the  sanctity 
of  my  home  and  the  security  of  my  nation, 
is  it  not  time  that  it  began  to  make  some 
difference  to  me?"  then  we  should  see  the 
entire  nation  spring  into  sacrificial  activity. 

Our  citizens  ought  to  endeavor  to  visual- 
ize the  difference  the  war  has  made  to  the 
hundreds  of  thousands  of  men  now  wearing 
the  American  uniform.  They  have  sacrificed 
their  financial  prospects,  many  of  them  be- 
yond recovery ;  thousands  have  left  college 
in  the  midst  of  their  studies,  never  to  return ; 
nearly  all  have  foregone  the  comforts  of 
homes  as  dear  to  them  as  to  the  rest  of  us ; 
they  must  all  spend  months  of  drastic  train- 
ing in  camps  or  on  ships;  before  them — 
how  many  we  dare  not  compute — there  are 


WILL  AMBEICA  FAIL!  117 

ghastly  wounds  and  painful  deaths  upon  a 
foreign  battle-field,  or  devilish  tortures  in 
barbaric  prisons ;  to  all  of  them  there  will  be 
cold,  hunger,  thirst,  weariness  and  the  sur- 
rounding horrors  of  war.  If  service  means 
all  that  and  even  more  to  our  men-in-arms, 
what  right  have  we,  in  the  peace  and  security 
of  our  homes,  to  refuse  to  conform  our  lives 
to  the  new  conditions? 

Neither  can  any  civilian  say  he  has  done 
his  share  while  anything  more  remains  that 
he  may  do.  If  the  men  and  women  of  cap- 
ital give  one-half  of  their  accumulations  in 
order  to  save  the  other  half,  they  may  con- 
sider that  they  have  gotten  off  very  cheaply ; 
if  the  business  man  allots  a  third  of  his  time 
to  war  work  in  his  community  he  is  well  off 
compared  with  his  neighbor  whom  the  draft 
took;  if  it  be  necessary  to  go  to  bed  dead 
tired  every  night,  before  any  one  grumbles 
he  should  picture  the  man  in  the  trenches 
with  no  bed  at  all  but  the  muddy  floor  of  a 
dugout  and  no  covering  but  his  wet,  cold 
clothing ;  if  a  woman  has  to  abandon  social 
functions  to  make  surgical  dressings  she 
ought  to  remember  that  the  fairest  and 
noblest  women  of  other  lands  have  been 
slaving  in  the  hospitals  at  the  front  for  many 
weary  months  without  respite  or  reward ;  if 


118  WILL  AMEEICA  FAILT 

the  laboring  man  is  called  upon  to  exceed  the 
usual  hours  of  work  he  may  thank  his  stars 
that  he  still  has  a  chance  to  work  as  a  free 
man  for  freedom ;  if  the  industrial  economist 
is  inclined  to  carp  at  narrowed  profits  he 
should  consider  that  production  for  the  whole 
must  overrule  profits  for  the  few,  because  if 
we  lose  the  war  we  shall  have  to  pay  indem- 
nities for  all  the  nations  into  the  coffers  of 
Germany — which  will  eat  up  all  our  profits 
for  many  generations  to  come;  if  we  are 
prone  to  chafe  because  of  a  sugarless,  or 
meatless,  or  wheatless  menu  we  bow  our 
heads  in  reverence  at  the  thought  of  the 
father  and  mother  who  will  sorrow  for  the 
son  who  rests  in  an  unmarked  grave  across 
the  sea.  No  one  understands  the  spiritual 
and  universal  significance  of  this  war  who 
talks  of  having  done  "  his  share." 

No  war  in  which  our  nation  has  ever  been 
engaged  is  like  this  war.  The  Revolution 
was  a  conflict  for  rights,  but  they  were  our 
rights.  The  Civil  War  was  a  struggle  to 
preserve  this  nation  as  a  nation,  and  it  con- 
cerned ourselves  almost  exclusively.  But 
we  are  fighting  now  for  the  future  of  human- 
ity, for  those  universal  sanctities  which  mark 
us  as  higher  than  the  beasts,  for  the  spiritual 
prerequisites  of  progress  and  peace — honor, 


WILL  AMERICA  FAIL!  119 

truth,  righteousness  and  justice.  To  say 
that  we  battle  for  democracy  is  an  under- 
statement, to  say  that  we  fight  for  civilization 
falls  below  the  issue ;  we  are  at  war  for  all 
the  slowly  and  painfully  accumulated  funda- 
mental virtues  and  graces  which  we  call 
Christianity. 

If  we  fail  now,  and  the  world  comes  under 
the  domination  of  that  Germany  which  vio- 
lated every  treaty  and  plighted  honor,  which 
dragged  the  villainous  Turk  down  to  its  own 
viler  level,  which  raped  and  poisoned  and 
mutilated  women  and  children  and  called  its 
preachers  and  professors  to  justify  the  ghastly 
outrages,  which  made  all  the  perfidies  and 
passions  and  butcheries  of  the  Moguls  seem 
almost  like  the  incidents  of  mere  misguided 
virtue  : — if  that  Germany  wins  the  war  then 
mankind,  which  had  climbed  so  nearly  to  the 
sublime  stature  of  Christ,  will  fall  back  to  the 
unspeakable  wallowings  of  Calaban. 

These  considerations  concern  us  all  and  at 
all  times.  They  should  glow  in  the  letters 
written  to  the  men  in  camp,  they  should 
regulate  the  program  of  every  day's  activi- 
ties, they  should  write  the  figures  in  the 
check  book  when  demand  is  made  upon  our 
patriotism,  they  should  determine  the  mood 
in  which  the  appeals  of  various  war-work 


120  WILL  AMEBICA  FAIL! 

activities  are  received.  The  churches  back 
in  the  home  towns  and  villages  ought  to 
treat  their  men  in  the  camps  as  exemplars  of 
the  sacrificial  spirit  of  the  Master-Lord  and 
send  messages,  letters  and  tokens  of  com- 
radeship to  them  ;  public  officials  should  be 
enthusiastic  and  eager  to  minimize  the  temp- 
tations wherever  men  in  uniform  are  found  ; 
every  agency  for  the  physical,  social,  moral 
or  spiritual  benefit  of  the  soldiers  should  have 
proud  and  joyful  volunteers  in  superabun- 
dance to  provide  whatever  is  required  ;  each 
community,  large  or  small,  should  imme- 
diately organize  its  resources  upon  a  scien- 
tific basis  for  the  period  of  the  war  in  order 
instantly  to  meet  emergency  calls,  and  not 
depend  upon  a  haphazard,  ill-arranged 
campaign  in  which  many  of  the  most  val- 
uable human  and  financial  factors  are  missed  ; 
every  man  or  woman,  whether  lay  or  clerical, 
who  sees  the  spiritual  issues  of  the  struggle 
and  has  the  gift  of  clear  interpretation, 
should  be  used  in  school  and  church  and  on 
the  public  platform  to  create  the  high  temper 
needed  by  the  nation  in  such  a  crisis  ;  all 
political  party  distinctions  and  sectarian  dif- 
ferences should  be  minimized,  while  together 
and  as  one  men  gird  themselves  to  guard 
and  establish  the  everlasting  essentials.  The 


WILL  AMERICA  PAILt  121 

battles  will  be  lost  or  won  by  the  soldiers 
and  sailors  now  in  training  ;  the  war  will  be 
lost  or  won  by  the  ordinary  American  men 
and  women.  The  last  reserve  of  democracy, 
civilization  and  Christianity  is  now  on  trial. 
Will  America  fail  ?  Not  if  we  realize  that 
this  is  the  last  and  most  holy  of  the  Crusades ; 
not  if  we  understand  that  as  a  nation  we  have 
one  and  only  one  business  now — to  win  the 
war;  not  if  we  feel  that  our  hundreds  of 
thousands  of  fighting  men  are  carrying  for- 
ward and  completing  the  work  begun  on 
Calvary ;  not  if  we  plain  citizens  of  to-day 
can  foresee  that  all  future  generations  in  all 
lands  will  look  back  upon  our  sacrifices  as 
the  most  glorious  contribution  to  human 
welfare.  Will  America  fail?  Not  unless 
America  first  becomes  a  vassal  of  Germany 
on  a  parity  with  Turkey,  Bulgaria  and  the 
subsidized  elements  of  the  Russian  Bolshe- 
viki — a  level  to  which  our  Pacifists  and  pro- 
Germans  would  gladly  drag  us.  So  long  as 
the  spirit  of  Washington  and  Lincoln  beats 
clearly  and  strongly  in  our  souls  America 
cannot  fail. 

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A  Book  that  Radiates  Faith,  Hope,  and  Courage 

FOURTH  EDITION 

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By 
CHAPLAIN  THOMAS  TIPLADY,  B.E.F. 

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f£  Shows  us  the  soldier  at  the  front,  as  the 
author  knows  and  loves  him,  "not  scarlet — 
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C.  "  Sincere  faith,  unflagging  courage,  thorough  man- 
liness—an interesting  book  by  a  chaplain  greatly 
loved." — Providence  Journal. 

C.  "  One  of  the  best  of  the  war  books.  The  author, 
a  field  chaplain,  was  in  Flanders  in  the  thick  of  the 
fight  for  many  months.  He  pictures  the  real  soldier 
at  the  front — his  heroism,  his  sacrifice,  his  reverence 
for  all  sacred  things  as  few  writers  have  been  able 
to  picture  him." — The  Pittsburgh  Post. 

C.  "  It  is  a  first-hand  account  of  heroism  and  self 
sacrifice.  Here  are  stories  which  none  can  read  dry- 
eyed,  but,  nevertheless,  are  contagious  of  hope  and 
honor  and  courage.  Of  all  the  war  literature  issued  in 
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the  purpose  of  THE  CROSS  AT  THE  FRONT." 

— The  Nashville  Banner. 

C,  "  '  Vivid "  is  too  dim  a  word  to  express  the  living 
pictures  which  this  chaplain  has  seen  in  France.  Some 
of  the  chapters  are  among  the  finest  pieces  of  pathos 
we  have  read  anywhere.  Read  the  book  and  you  will 
be  a  better  man  for  all  your  tasks."—  Chicago  Standard. 

C.  "  Marked  by  a  vividness  which  shows  it  to  have 
been  written  within  range  or  sound  of  the  guns,  full 
of  that  humanness  which  will  cause  answering  echo  in 
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shall  rest.  M.  Savic  is  a  native  Serb,  who,  through  service 
as  correspondent  of  the  English  press,  has  been  brought  in 
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in  his  country's  tragic  story  in  able  fashion  throughout.  The 
book  is  one  of  extraordinary  interest. 

In  the  Land  of  Ararat 

A  Sketch  of  the  Life  of  Mrs.  Elizabeth  Barrows  Ussher 
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"  A  timely  book  full  of  just  the  questions  that  everybody  is 
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How  Would  Jesus  Regard  a  "Slacker  "f 

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C.  "  Capital,"  says  Colonel  Theodore  Roosevelt.  "  I 
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about everyone  toward  the  righteousness  of  the  present  war 
in  behalf  of  a  larger  liberalism,  a  truer  freedom." 

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the  fight  for  Christ  and  Freedom. 

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with  the  salient  evils  and  temptations  which  await  the  young 
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ory."— Harry  Emerson  Fosdicfy. 

"  The  nature  of  war,  its  effect  upon  man,  its  effect  upon 
the  moral  law,  the  part  religion  has  to  play,  is  written  with  a 
passion  and  a  wealth  of  information  which  holds  the  interest. 
A  challenging  note  which  men  ought  to  hear." 

— Congregationalist. 


Over  Five  Million  copies  of  a  Pamphlet  containing  striking 
portions  of  this  book  are  being  distributed  to  the  soldiers  of 
America  and  Britain. 

German  Atrocities 

HOW  A  NATION  LOST  ITS  SOUL 

By  NEWELL  DWIGHT  HILLIS 
Many  Phitosrafihs  of  Reductions  of  Affidavits.  Diaries,  Seems,  ttc. 

12mo,  cloth,  net  $1.00 

Theodore  Roosevelt  says:  "  I  wish  every  one  in  this 
nation  could  hear  this  indictment."  The  conditions 
thus  described  by  an  unimpeachable  witness  should 
wake  every  man  and  woman  in  America. 

"  Dr.  Hillis  tells  of  the  cold-blooded  murder  of  babies,  little 
girls  and  boys  and  their  mothers,  by  German  soldiers  and 
officers;  of  the  mutilation  of  dead  bodies;  the  devilish  in- 
genuity of  the  German  War  Staff,  in  directing  the  complete 
devastation  of  whole  districts;  of  the  torture  of  French 
soldiers  and  Red  Cross  workers." — Indianapolis  News. 

Studies  of  the  Great  War 

WHAT  EACH  NATION  HAS  AT  STAKE 

By  NEWELL  DWIGHT  HILLIS 

12mo,  cloth,  net  $1.20 

"  A  true  index  of  American  sentiment  and  a  brilliant 
statement  of  facts." — N.  Y.  Times. 

Facing  the  Hindenburg  Line 

Being  Personal  Observations  at  the  Fronts  and  in  the  Camps 

of   the   British,   French,   Americans,   and   Italians, 

During  the  Campaigns  of  1917 

Bj  BURRIS  A.  JENKINS 
12mo,  cloth,  net  $1.25 

C,  In  the  dual  capacity  of  war-correspondent  and 
Y.  M.  C.  A.  lecturer,  Mr.  Jenkins  has  had  exceptional 
opportunities  for  seeing  things  at  close  range  on  the 
battle-fronts  of  Europe.  In  bright,  telling  fashion  he 
has  set  down  what  he  saw  and  heard  among  the 
Frenchmen  at  Verdun,  on  the  British  Front,  in  Northern 
France  and  Flanders,  with  the  Italian  Armies  around 
Gorizia.  Mr.  Jenkins'  book  is  marked  throughout  by 
a  deep  sincerity  and  descriptive  powers  away  above 
the  ordinary.  A  live,  stirring  account  of  life  in  the 
European  war  zone. 


OVERDUE. 

W\Y  2  1939 


°N 


SEVENTH 


NOV08 
ECT61992 


LDSl 


sr. 


YB  2129; 


GENE/ML 


OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


